Money
Liar’s Poker Summary & Review: Read the Incentives, Not the Pitch
Michael Lewis's 1989 tour of Salomon Brothers, where liar's poker trained the bluff. A TGR summary with a 7-day plan to read…
Read Summary →
Michael Lewis
"The reporter who made Wall Street’s scoreboard readable."
Michael Lewis was born in New Orleans in 1960. He studied art history at Princeton and economics at the London School of Economics, then joined Salomon Brothers through a chance meeting rather than a posted exam. As a young bond salesman in London and New York he watched how a training program and a mortgage machine taught people to move paper. He left the firm and published Liar’s Poker in 1989. Later books — Moneyball, The Blind Side, The Big Short, Flash Boys — keep the same method: stay on a closed floor until the scoreboard is the story. Read him for incentives, not for stock tips.
2 books·Wall Street, incentives & the stories money tells
Books by Michael Lewis
Our in-depth summaries and reviews of his work
Money
The Big Short Summary & Review: The Outsiders Who Saw the Crash Coming
Michael Lewis's true story of the outsiders who saw the 2008 subprime crisis coming and bet against Wall Street — margin of…
Read Summary →Key Ideas & Recurring Themes
Read the incentive, not the pitch
A sale is a story someone is paid to tell. Write who gets paid before you buy.
The training is the culture
Salomon’s program taught the firm’s voice by drills and status. The desk is the real classroom.
Outsiders who saw the crash
The Big Short follows the few who bet against a housing machine everyone else was paid to keep running.
Notable Quotes
"One hand, one million dollars, no tears."— John Gutfreund to John Meriwether, as reported in Liar's Poker
Related Authors
Book Author Michael Lewis
Liar’s Poker Summary & Review: Read the Incentives, Not the Pitch
Michael Lewis's 1989 tour of Salomon Brothers, where liar's poker trained the bluff. A TGR summary with a 7-day plan to read incentives instead of the pitch.
The Big Short Summary & Review: The Outsiders Who Saw the Crash Coming
Michael Lewis's true story of the outsiders who saw the 2008 subprime crisis coming and bet against Wall Street — margin of safety, conflicts of interest, and how complexity hides risk.