10 books like The Smartest Guys in the Room

I read J R the first time in college, and it was the ideal combination of challenging, cynical, illuminating – and hilarious. The novel is a cult classic among well-read Wall Street types, but be warned: it’s 726 pages of almost entirely dialogue, with not much to guide you about who is speaking or where. Once you figure out what Gaddis is up to, the writing becomes immersive and you join a wild ride with the eponymous sixth-grader, who uses the school’s payphone between classes to trade surplus picnic forks, free catalog samples, and eventually controlling stakes in major companies. J R is one of those books you’ll be proud to finish, and never forget.

This is the oldest book on my list, a nineteenth-century compilation of lunacy of all sorts, with a focus on financial lunacy. Mackay aptly compares widespread mass delusions (think Nostradamus, or alchemy) to financial bubbles, including the frenzies surrounding the South Sea Company in England and tulip bulbs in Holland. Some scholars question the historical accuracy of Mackay’s stories, particularly about valuable tulip bulbs being accidentally eaten, but he has the money quote of all time regarding financial scandals: “Men, it has been well said, think in herds. It will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.” If you want a more scholarly description of how speculative bubbles form and burst, try Charles P. Kindleberger’s Manias, Panics, and Crashes. But if you want to be shocked and entertained, read Mackay.

Out of all the investigative reporting that emerged from the 2008 financial meltdown, Henriques’ account of the scheme that out-Ponzied Ponzi is the book that stays with me.

The Madoff story is about brazen lies and insatiable greed, to be sure, but Henriques’ approach is nuanced, thorough, yet accessible, showing the complacency (one might say complicity) of investors and regulators, dazzled or cowed by Madoff’s magic.

How do you pull off a $65 billion scam? With a lot of help. 

There should be at least one book about the 1920s on this list, and this one deserves mention because it elegantly brings to life several of the most interesting characters from that era. There are some dubious ones, such as Jesse Livermore, the “Boy Plunger” who operated bucket shops, shady financial firms that manipulated stocks with fake news. And there are more legitimate leaders of the era: Pierpont Morgan’s son, Jack, and his brainier partner, Tom Lamont, and the power brokers of Kuhn Loeb. Brooks vividly skewers all of them. He misspelled “Golkonda,” but the essence of his story nails the excesses of the era, and is an apt reminder of how much wealth and economic inequality can result from the Federal Reserve going wild with loose monetary policy.

By now, everyone knows John Carreyou’s book, Bad Blood, which chronicles the rise and fall of biotech startup, Theranos, and its sociopathic founder Elizabeth Holmes.

The capacity of this college dropout to deceive investors, board members, and the public was truly epic, as is the book. But what I especially loved was that I didn’t have to suffer the painful withdrawal that so often accompanies the completion of an engrossing tale.

The HBO series (esp. Amanda Siegfried’s masterful performance), the author’s subsequent podcast, and Holmes' pre- and post-trial shenanigans has kept this storyline alive.

The New Yorker writer and author of the New York Times bestseller Say Anything—unveils the secrets and lies of the Sackler family, the billionaire owners of Purdue Pharma. Keefe is a master of narrative storytelling and an incredible researcher, and this book made me want to scream at the greed and callousness of the Sacklers. Many see the family as downright evil, and understandably so. Since Keefe’s book came out, a number of museums and organizations have tried to distance themselves from the Sacklers. Keefe also testified before a congressional committee that aimed to hold the Sacklers accountable for the opioid crisis. Keefe poured through hundreds of thousands of documents—including messages sent from one family member to another—as part of his definitive investigation of the Sacklers. I admire reporters like Keefe who are willing to do the tedious work of scouring records.

There is a partial myth, eagerly promoted by corporate interests and their lawyers, that federal prosecutors are frighteningly all-powerful and basically cannot be defeated. The veteran financial and legal reporter Eichenwald knows otherwise. The Informant, in contrast to the almost farcical (if enjoyable!) Stephen Soderbergh movie based on the book, lays out a textbook case of how prosecutors can blow an important case due to infighting, problems with unreliable informants, and clever high-priced defense lawyering that exploits every error that less-than-superb prosecutors might make. Here we have a tale of CEO-level officials at major global corporations caught on videotape flagrantly conspiring to violate antitrust laws and, in the end, almost no one ends up in prison. Eichenwald details the countless blunders by many Justice Department lawyers spread across several offices, and the clever maneuvering throughout by crack corporate defenders. He too, by the way, paints a fascinating portrait of… show more.

Partnoy, a distinguished law professor at Berkeley, is a brilliant chronicler of the people and products in modern financial markets. One could read any of his books and say they were among the best ones on the market and corporate chicanery. But I love his first book, in which he tells the tale of his brief time trading derivatives—back in the very early days of those now world-famous products—among the unsavory characters of a Wall Street trading floor. The story has been told by others since (Wolf of Wall Street, Big Short, etc.) but Partnoy may have done it first. And seeing that world through his young, brilliant, and impressionistic eyes is wonderful. His firm tried to block him from publishing the book, but he did it and has gone on to a magnificent academic career in which he continues to tell it like it is, understanding the… show more.

I consider this to be one of the best books ever written about climate change. For here we have a clear-eyed examination of what is working and not working to save the planet from climate catastrophe. Malm, a Swedish academic, demonstrates carefully and provocatively that only militant action has moved the needle on past injustices — and that we better get militant now if we hope to make meaningful changes that save Earth from a situation of climate injustice that is bad but is going to get worse. If you already understand the predicament we’re in, including the “6th mass extinction,” then skip the other books and start with this one. It’s also accessible and well-written. 

Climate change is difficult enough to address, even if everyone is on the same page. Unfortunately, climate change has become a very divisive issue in the United States. This book, by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, was maybe the first to comprehensively examine the source of this climate skepticism and how it manifested itself into our political system. Even though it was written about 25 years ago, the issues it raises are still with us today. Unless we can rise above them, getting sound climate policy implemented, which is essential to solving the problem, will be nearly impossible.