This is a tremendous book for understanding the late-2008 financial meltdown in the sub-prime mortgage bond market. I would rank this with other well-written popular Wall Street books like "Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco." Michael Lewis writes with great skill about financial matters, explaining some of the arcane financial instruments (credit-default swaps? credit-default options?) using simplified examples of transactions to illustrate how traders would buy and sell these instruments with the hope of getting a return on their investment.
