Too Big to Fail

The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System--and Themselves

By: Andrew Ross Sorkin

Narrated by: William Hughes

Length: 21 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's summary

The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System - and Themselves

A real-life thriller about the most tumultuous period in America's financial history by an acclaimed New York Times reporter. Andrew Ross Sorkin delivers the first true, behind-the-scenes, moment-by-moment account of how the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression developed into a global tsunami.

From inside the corner office at Lehman Brothers to secret meetings in South Korea and the corridors of Washington, Too Big to Fail is the definitive story of the most powerful men and women in finance and politics grappling with success and failure, ego and greed, and, ultimately, the fate of the world's economy.

"We've got to get some foam down on the runway!" a sleepless Timothy Geithner, the then-president of the Federal Reserve of New York, would tell Henry M. Paulson, the Treasury secretary, about the catastrophic crash the world's financial system would experience. Through unprecedented access to the players involved, Too Big to Fail re-creates all the drama and turmoil, revealing neverdisclosed details and elucidating how decisions made on Wall Street over the past decade sowed the seeds of the debacle.

This true story is not just a look at banks that were "too big to fail"; it is a real-life thriller with a cast of bold-faced names who themselves thought they were too big to fail.

©2009 Andrew Ross Sorkin (P)2009 Penguin Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"Andrew Ross Sorkin pens what may be the definitive history of the banking crisis." ( The Atlantic Monthly)
"Andrew Ross Sorkin has written a fascinating, scene-by-scene saga of the eyeless trying to march the clueless through Great Depression II." (Tom Wolfe)

Brilliant, Accurate and Keeps You On The Edge

Perhaps the best book ever written on the finclancial crisis. Andrew Ross Sorkin brilliantly documented tru accurate accounts.

A business book that reads like a detective novel

This is a must-read if you follow financial markets. That being said, I didn't know whether to read it or to "listen" to it. With Christmas cooking and holiday prep, I decided to listen to it and I was not disappointed. A great "listen", the book is more like a detective novel, with non-stop action and a very revealing look at the characters involved in the "Second Big Contraction". I have been recommending this book to everyone I know who is interested in politics, history or just plain story-telling.

Financial Thriller

If you could sum up Too Big to Fail in three words, what would they be?

Informative, dramatic, necessary

What did you like best about this story?

I feel informed about one of the most important events of our lifetime. The story is compelling and something of a roller-coaster

Wow! Well Done!

A great deal of research went into writing this book. Very interesting. I am not sure how I feel about these people that caused our country so much economical heartache. Like the rest of us, some people are good, hard working people and some are crooks.

The Idiot

Great account of the crisis, which is ongoing - only perpetuated by inventing money from current and future taxpayers to uphold people who are not very intelligent at all. But are too big to fail in the estimation of their ilk on the private / public financial merry go round.

Too long, too repetitive

What did you like best about Too Big to Fail? What did you like least?

Interesting to get a glimpse inside the world of high finance, but the book could have been improved by being 30% shorter.

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

Took way too long to get to the ending, even when listening at an accelerated rate. I found myself thinking "Would Lehman Brothers hurry up and fail already so I can move on to another book?"

Was Too Big to Fail worth the listening time?

The book held my interest for the first two thirds, but I ended up skipping over a chunk toward the end because it was too repetitive hearing about the negotiations among arrogant bigwigs who got in a snit over who should call whom first to arrange a buyout.

well written

narrator was not to good but overall very good book. would recommend to anyone yhsts it

disjointed ordering of the audio file

partway through the book (chapter 11), the prologue started playing. as such, nothing wrong with the actual performance of the story, but the ordering, either by Audible or otherwise, was disjointed

Well Worth a Read

What distinguishes this book from others about the 2008 financial meltdown is the author's extraordinary access to the high-level government and industry players who were at the center of the drama. The writing style is easy to follow (once you have the names clearly in mind) and flows very well. The picture that emerges is a group of executives and officials trying to improvise remedies for a devastating and unprecedented financial collapse on the fly, under intense time pressures, and with no assurance they would be successful. In the circumstances we can be fortunate things did not go into complete meltdown. It is also abundantly clear that sensible financial reform is a must so that the country does not face a similar crisis in the future.

The book is mainly useful for understanding the course of events, policy decisions, and mergers that occurred once the scope of the financial meltdown became apparent at the highest levels of the government. It is less useful as a source for understanding the background and business practices that led to the enormous build-up of irresponsible investments in subprime mortgages and their derivatives that were the prime cause of the crisis. For that background, I would suggest Gillian Tett's book (Fool's Gold); A Colossal Failure of Common Sense (dealing with the Lehman collapse); and articles by Michael Lewis.

Wow

Wow! No wonder we are in such a mess. What a great accounting of the situation. A great read/listen.