Boomerang

Travels in the New Third World

By: Michael Lewis

Narrated by: Dylan Baker

Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

From the #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Big Short, Liar’s Poker and The Blind Side!

The tsunami of cheap credit that rolled across the planet between 2002 and 2008 was more than a simple financial phenomenon: it was temptation, offering entire societies the chance to reveal aspects of their characters they could not normally afford to indulge.

The Greeks wanted to turn their country into a pinata stuffed with cash and allow as many citizens as possible to take a whack at it. The Germans wanted to be even more German; the Irish wanted to stop being Irish.

The trademark of Michael Lewis’s best sellers is to tell an important and complex story through characters so outsized and outrageously weird that you’d think they have to be invented. (You’d be wrong.) In Boomerang, we meet a brilliant monk who has figured out how to game Greek capitalism to save his failing monastery; a cod fisherman who, with three days’ training, becomes a currency trader for an Icelandic bank; and an Irish real estate developer so outraged by the collapse of his business that he drives across the country to attack the Irish Parliament with his earth-moving equipment.

Lewis’s investigation of bubbles beyond our shores is so brilliantly, sadly hilarious that it leads the American listener to a comfortable complacency: Oh, those foolish foreigners. But when Lewis turns a merciless eye on California and Washington DC, we see that the narrative is a trap baited with humor, and we understand the reckoning that awaits the greatest and greediest of debtor nations.

©2011 Michael Lewis (P)2011 Simon & Schuster

Critic reviews

“No one writes with more narrative panache about money and finance than Lewis.” (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times)

Wow, Finantial disaster tourism at it's best

If you ever wondered how the financial crisis could happen, this book will show how it's a story of regular people. Perfect length and I enjoyed every second.

Excellent, entertaining and informative

Where does Boomerang rank among all the audiobooks you???ve listened to so far?

Couldn't say. High among the non-fiction.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Boomerang?

Learning that the Greek national railroad brings in 100 million Euros per year and pays its employees 400 million Euros per year.

What about Dylan Baker???s performance did you like?

It is lively.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Not especially, but it is absorbing.

Any additional comments?

I would recommend this to anyone as containing some very good lessons in economics.

What Michael Lewis Does Best

A template for understanding recent financial market shenanigans based on human behavior and human limitations (of intellect, pride, greed). Lewis is always entertaining. Thoroughly enjoyable.

informative and easy to listen to

I never lost interest. This audiobook kept my attention all the way through. That can only be because both the book and the narration are excellent.

Government Bailouts 101

Would you listen to Boomerang again? Why?

Yes i'm listening to it a second time right now. And i'll probably go for 3. I am learning more about finance as i listen so i understand the beginning better after making it through the end.

What did you like best about this story?

It describes perfectly how government intervention in markets is a gateway for cronyism and how together they can destroy entire economies and leave behind a wake of poverty.

Enjoyable

Would you listen to Boomerang again? Why?

Yes. There's a lot of information and I'm sure I missed some details.

What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?

While I have some knowledge of the banking industry and the economic issues surrounding our global economy, Michael Lewis put the information together not only from an economic perspective but also from a cultural one. It's the cultural aspect that interested me most.

Any additional comments?

I hadn't considered the unique aspects of culture in Iceland, Greece, Ireland, and the US in terms of banking and finance. This book gave me a lot to think about.

Provocative, but slightly racist

This is quite a provocative and mostly humorous view of the European economic meltdown . It does provide a fairly lighthearted and mocking view about the causes of the economic crisis and casts the blame at the stupidity of various nations and the greed of others (e.g., Iceland and the Greeks rightfully get chastised for their lies and sheer economic stupidity... as do the Germans either because they are just greedy or just plain stupid). However, the book sometimes goes a little far with focusing on the character of a people as a whole to the point of sounding uncomfortably racist. Apart from that, I quite enjoyed the book, as it provides a nice contrast to other more "serious" books on the matter.

worth the purchase

Would you listen to Boomerang again? Why?

Michael lewis book is insightful, interesting and entertaining. He is able to distill down complex topics so that a lay person would understand them. The stories about the different countries affected by the financial crisis are particularly interesting.

great book

What did you love best about Boomerang?

Loved it. Lewis is entertaining and informative. My one complaint is that this book would be (for my style) more meaningful in the traditional format. There is a LOT of great information and facts that wiz by you in the reading, that you are always wishing you could scribe in to the margins

Without the Mathematical Equations

I've been reading Michael Lewis' materials for many years. From what I've read so far, I always learned something new or understand something that I didn't understand before. Like Liar's Poker, which is a classic read on Wall Street and still holds up very well, even after 20 years.

Boomerang should be in a time capsule for our future generation to read, but something tells me that things won't be that much different in next hundred years, other than flying cars.

Michael Lewis is a economist that doesn't dumb down the facts and figures, but without the mathematical equations and trying to figure out which tax bracket we are in, he can explain things in human being terms.

I haven't read his other novels, yet, like The Blind Side, but I will always be a fan of his financial explanations.

I just hope that he will write a book on the United State Postal Office and explain why they are going out of business, beyond the blame of 21st century and modern technology, like Internet, email, bill pay.