Michael Lewis collaborated with Dave Eggers and a number of McSweeney’s interns to produce the timely anthology, Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity (W.W. Norton, $27.95). Lewis made his reputation as an insightful, often humorous financial writer with Liar’s Poker, his best-selling account of the 1987 stock-market crash. Trying to understand why financial markets are constructed on an idea that underestimates the risk of catastrophes, Lewis has collected the writings of some razor-sharp minds, including Paul Krugman, Jeffrey Sachs, Joseph Stiglitz, and Robert Shiller, to offer a wide range of views on the last two decades of money madness. Panic opens with Black Monday, October 19, 1987, when the Dow lost 23 % of its value, and closes with warnings issued a year ago about sub-prime mortgages, accumulated bad debt, and a growing army of ignorant CEOs.
- Barbara M.