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The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers
Crown Business
August 2009
On Sale: July 21, 2009
368 pages
ISBN: 0307588335
EAN: 9780307588333
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
One of the biggest questions of the financial crisis has not been answered until now. What happened at Lehman Brothers and why was it allowed to fail, with aftershocks that rocked the global economy? In this news-making, often astonishing book, a former Lehman Brothers Vice President gives us the straight answersβright from the belly of the beast. In A Colossal Failure of Common Sense, Larry McDonald, a Wall Street insider, reveals the culture and unspoken rules of the game like no book has ever done. The book is couched in the very human story of Larry McDonaldβs Horatio Alger- like rise from a Massachusetts βgateway to nowhereβ housing project to the New York headquarters of Lehman Brothers, home of one of the worldβs toughest trading floors. We get a close-up view of the participants in the Lehman collapse, especially those who saw it coming with a helpless, angry certainty. We meet the Brahmins at the top, whose reckless, pedal-to-the-floor addiction to growth finally demolished the nationβs oldest investment bank. The Wall Street we encounter here is a ruthless place, where brilliance, arrogance, ambition, greed, capacity for relentless toil, and other human traits combine in a potent mix that sometimes fuels prosperity but occasionally destroys it. The full significance of the dissolution of Lehman Brothers remains to be measured. But this much is certain: it was a devastating blow to Americaβsβand the worldβsβfinancial system. And it need not have happened. This is the story of why it did.
 Media BuzzMorning Edition - July 21, 2009
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