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I’m a career financial and business journalist, only recently turned novelist. I’m obsessed with the way that history repeats itself in the financial markets and that we never seem to learn our lessons. Fear and greed have always driven the behavior of bankers, traders, and investors; and they still do today, only barely inhibited by our regulatory system. I want to help people understand how markets work, and I like combining fiction with fact to explain these systems and how they’re abused. With that in mind, I work during the day as a reporter at NPR and by night as a scribbler of historical fiction with a financial twist.
I love this book because it reads like a fictional tale about the modern financial markets, and yet it’s all absolutely true!
I am still staggered by some of the stories that Lewis tells about the real-life characters who worked on Wall Street back in the 1980s. And I’m in awe of the colorful way he describes and explains the way the bond markets work—no easy task.
Not only did he bring the go-go days of the 80s to life for me, but he also gave me a solid grounding in the machinations of the financial markets, helping me in both my writing and journalism careers.
Michael Lewis was fresh out of Princeton and the London School of Economics when he landed a job at Salomon Brothers, one of Wall Street's premier investment firms. During the next three years, Lewis rose from callow trainee to bond salesman, raking in millions for the firm and cashing in on a modern-day gold rush. Liar's Poker is the culmination of those heady, frenzied years-a behind-the-scenes look at a unique and turbulent time in American business. From the frat-boy camaraderie of the forty-first-floor trading room to the killer instinct that made ambitious young men gamble everything on a high-stakes game…
Memory is capricious and impacts our view of the past. That’s why I do what I do! I am a twenty-year museum professional who began my career at Conner Prairie Interactive History Park, worked at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science for almost ten years, and am now part of the Arts & History department at the City and County of Broomfield. I have designed and developed programs and events, as well as managed teams in each of these stops. I seek to illuminate stories, elevate critical voices, and advocate for equity through the unique pathways of the arts, history, and museum magic.
By turns funny, poignant, and incisive, the late author Tony Horwitz tours the South with a journalist’s eye and a sociologist’s heart.
He bravely takes on the memory of the Civil War through the eyes of reenactors, angry neo-Confederates in bars, and Black museum guides (among many others). I recently re-read this book through the lens of the Black Lives Matter movement and the killing of George Floyd, which touched off numerous protests against monuments to Confederate leaders.
When Horwitz wrote this book in the late 1990s, it seemed unlikely that Monument Avenue in Richmond would ever change. In the case of monuments to problematic historic figures, at least, people’s perspectives have indeed shifted over time. Horwitz’s book is a great reminder that change is possible!
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent takes us on an explosive adventure into the soul of the unvanquished South, where Civil War reenactors, battlefield visitors, and fans of history resurrect the ghosts of the Lost Cause through ritual and remembrance.
"The freshest book about divisiveness in America that I have read in some time. This splendid commemoration of the war and its legacy ... is an eyes–open, humorously no–nonsense survey of complicated Americans." —The New York Times Book Review
For all who remain intrigued by the legacy of the Civil War—reenactors, battlefield visitors, Confederate descendants and other Southerners,…
I’m a nerd about all things museums and archives, which I teach and write about. I was trained as an anthropologist, and got really interested in using anthropology’s methods (namely ethnography) to do long-term, embedded, deep-dive fieldwork in bureaucratic settings, like big museums. I love reading books by journalists, economists, historians, and others who do ethnography and really embed themselves in different communities, places, and cultures.
This was the first book I read that was kind of an embedded object biography back when I was an undergraduate student in my second-ever anthropology class. I was totally hooked on the genre. This book follows t-shirts, from where cotton is picked, to where t-shirts are manufactured, printed, sold and distributed, to their disposal—including second lives on the used clothing market. “Who made your t-shirt?” as a great first starting question.
The keys to global business success, as taught by a T-shirt's journey
The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy is a critically-acclaimed narrative that illuminates the globalization debates and reveals the key factors to success in global business. Tracing a T-shirt's life story from a Texas cotton field to a Chinese factory and back to a U.S. storefront before arriving at the used clothing market in Africa, the book uncovers the political and economic forces at work in the global economy. Along the way, this fascinating exploration addresses a wealth of compelling questions about politics, trade, economics, ethics,…
I was always interested in American history and studied at Brown University under an outstanding professor of American economic history, James Blaine Hedges. During my career at the mutual fund association I often approached issues from an historical perspective. For example: Why did Congress draft legislation in a particular way? How would past events likely affect a regulator’s decisions today? As a lawyer I had been trained to write carefully and precisely. As a lobbyist I learned the need to pre
The book does an outstanding job in describing the people and events that produced the October 1929 stock market crash in a highly entertaining style. Galbraith wrote more like a witty and insightful journalist than the award-winning economist that he was. This is a must-read for anyone who wants to learn about American financial history. The book is a model for writers who want to educate non-experts about public policy issues.
'One of the most engrossing books I have ever read' Daily Telegraph
John Kenneth Galbraith's now-classic account of the 1929 stock market collapse remains the definitive book on the most disastrous cycle of boom and bust in modern times.
Vividly depicting the causes, effects, aftermath and long-term consequences of financial meltdown, Galbraith also describes the people and the corporations who were affected by the catastrophe. With its depiction of the 'gold-rush fantasy' ingrained in America's psychology, The Great Crash 1929 remains a penetrating study of human greed and folly.
I’m a nerd about all things museums and archives, which I teach and write about. I was trained as an anthropologist, and got really interested in using anthropology’s methods (namely ethnography) to do long-term, embedded, deep-dive fieldwork in bureaucratic settings, like big museums. I love reading books by journalists, economists, historians, and others who do ethnography and really embed themselves in different communities, places, and cultures.
This is an academic book, but it's beautifully written, and not too, too jargony. Tsing does a kind of commodity ethnography, embedding herself in multiple parts of the lifecycle of the Matsutake Mushroom trade, while depicting the worlds of pickers, restauranteurs, mushroom traders and auctioneers, nature guides, and more. She also weaves in a critique of capitalist markets in which these kinds of natural entities now are embedded, which I dig!
What a rare mushroom can teach us about sustaining life on a fragile planet
Matsutake is the most valuable mushroom in the world-and a weed that grows in human-disturbed forests across the Northern Hemisphere. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing's account of these sought-after fungi offers insights into areas far beyond just mushrooms and addresses a crucial question: What manages to live in the ruins we have made? The Mushroom at the End of the World explores the unexpected corners of matsutake commerce, where we encounter Japanese gourmets, capitalist traders, Hmong jungle fighters, Finnish nature guides, and more. These companions lead us into…
I’m a wine writer, winemaker, organic wine farmer, and an accredited wine educator with decades of experience. I have loved wine since my first sip as a university student and wine is one of my life’s passions. I love how wine can connect you to a place, how it is like travel in a bottle, to a vintage, a place, a person. I’ve written five books about wine; I offer wine courses, tours and vineyard walks in South-West France and I live on the organic vineyard and winery that I co-founded with my husband. In my writing life, I’m also wine writer for Living magazine.
This book is my favourite wine book in recent times. In it, Bianca Bosker follows her quest to become a sommelier.
We follow her wine-tasting experiences, which include tasting with a high-flying circle of New York sommeliers from top restaurants and learning about wine while having sex. How is the last part possible? You’ll have to read it to find out!
You’ll also learn about wine, wine tasting, how your brain works, and the underworld of restaurants and sommeliers. This book is entertaining and well-written; I laughed out loud many times.
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND A NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS' PICK
"Thrilling . . . [told] with gonzo elan . . . When the sommelier and blogger Madeline Puckette writes that this book is the Kitchen Confidential of the wine world, she's not wrong, though Bill Buford's Heat is probably a shade closer." -Jennifer Senior, The New York Times
Professional journalist and amateur drinker Bianca Bosker didn't know much about wine-until she discovered an alternate universe where taste reigns supreme, a world of elite sommeliers who dedicate their lives to the pursuit of flavor. Astounded by their fervor and…
I ended up in financial journalism by happenstance (it was pretty much the only corner of the media world that was still hiring when I graduated in the early 2000s). But I fell in love with it. To understand the world, you have to understand money. Whether you like it or not, it is the hidden wiring that binds us all together. I’ve found that reading history books on finance and economics has helped me better understand what is going on today, so I hope the books on this list will help you do the same.
This is, for want of a better word, financial porn.
It won’t explain the underlying issues or even proximate triggers for the global financial crisis of 2008, but no one has ever written a financial book as titillating as Too Big to Fail. Sorkin really brings you into the rooms of power and conveys the sweaty panic that gripped the financial system as it careened over the edge.
They were masters of the financial universe, flying in private jets and raking in billions. They thought they were too big to fail. Yet they would bring the world to its knees.
Andrew Ross Sorkin, the news-breaking New York Times journalist, delivers the first true in-the-room account of the most powerful men and women at the eye of the financial storm - from reviled Lehman Brothers CEO Dick 'the gorilla' Fuld, to banking whiz Jamie Dimon, from bullish Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to AIG's Joseph Cassano, dubbed 'The Man Who Crashed the…
By the late nineties, I had lost faith in the industry where I had made a living for twenty years. Deregulation on Wall St and in the City had left investment banking with a business model riddled with conflict of interest. The rewards spiralled out of control and the businesses became too complicated for the regulators to supervise. I have a doctorate in history and had been a top-ranked investment analyst in several sectors. I took an idea to Penguin and my first book, The Death of Gentlemanly Capitalism, was published in 2001. I've since written six more, and contributed regularly to the Financial Times and BBC.
Discrete, mysterious, and powerful, Wall St’s great financial institutions shaped corporate America in the 20th century and none more so than Lazard Freres. But towards the end of the century, as competitors scaled up, Lazard was distracted by a power struggle involving hard-charging Wall St bankers and an inscrutable French billionaire. Who really played the winning hand? This book reveals all!
A grand and revelatory portrait of Wall Street’s most storied investment bank
Wall Street investment banks move trillions of dollars a year, make billions in fees, pay their executives in the tens of millions of dollars. But even among the most powerful firms, Lazard Frères & Co. stood apart. Discretion, secrecy, and subtle strategy were its weapons of choice. For more than a century, the mystique and reputation of the "Great Men" who worked there allowed the firm to garner unimaginable profits, social cachet, and outsized influence in the halls of power. But in the mid-1980s, their titanic egos started…
I fell in love with understanding cities toward the end of my college studies. It was the late 1960s and urban issues were foremost in the nation’s consciousness. The times were difficult for cities and many of the problems, seemingly intractable. That drew me to graduate work in urban studies and afterward, teaching about real estate development and finance. My work on public/private partnerships and the political economy of city building has drawn a wide audience. In explaining how cities are built and redeveloped, my goal has been to de-mystify the politics and planning process surrounding large-scale development projects and how they impact the physical fabric of cities.
It’s near impossible not to fall for the lure of urban history when a skilled writer brings to light compelling stories of the men (atlas no women in this book) who transformed New York into an economic powerhouse, the capital of capitalism, in the late 19th century.
Their names are familiar but not so their complete stories: J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, Samuel Gompers, Theodore Roosevelt. The writing is so good, it’s hard to put the book down.
Describes the emergence of post-Civil War New York City, as it evolved from a port city to metropolis via the birth of capitalism, and how such moguls as Rockefeller, Carnegie, and J. P. Morgan helped define the foundation of twentieth-century financial institutions. By the author of Fiorello H. LaGuardia and the Making of Modern New York.
My maternal grandmother was an unconventional woman and a feminist in every way that matters. Although she was raised according to Victorian norms when girls were expected to remain in patriarchal shadows, she was fiercely independent. She was my hero and encouraged me to forge my own future. She also nurtured in me a love of reading and writing, which led to me becoming a journalist and author. My grandmother and I shared a great love of animals. It’s no coincidence that my debut historical fiction, The Invincible Miss Cust is based on the true story of Britain and Ireland’s first female veterinary surgeon. I’m intrigued by strong, interesting women driven to follow their dreams.
Based on the true story of Belle da Costa Greene, the Black American woman who was compelled to hide her identity and pass as white to work as J P Morgan’s personal librarian, this book contains everything I love about historical, biographical fiction and more.
It’s about a woman who defied convention and whose life story is fascinating, relevant, and inspiring. Belle is an intelligent, driven woman, who can hold her own in any company, and yet, to realize her ambitions and protect her family, she must conceal who she really is.
I thoroughly enjoyed learning about her, and the lengths she had to go to pursue the career she loved. It’s a stunning tribute to an exceptional woman in history.
The Instant New York Times Bestseller! A Good Morning America* Book Club Pick!
Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR! Named a Notable Book of the Year by the Washington Post!
“Historical fiction at its best!”*
A remarkable novel about J. P. Morgan’s personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, the Black American woman who was forced to hide her true identity and pass as white in order to leave a lasting legacy that enriched our nation, from New York Times bestselling authors Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray.
In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by…
