Unfortunately, the length of the book exceeded my interest in the subject. Still, there was good information here, especially if you were among the unfortunate who held Bear Sterns stock as it plunged from $172 per share to single digit values and wanted to know more about the collapse. But I would have been happier with a shorter book on the subject which omitted some of the endless details. ( )

Too many quotes, not enough analysis.
Flashback structure is hard to handle. ( )

Very detailed explanation of the crisis at Bear Sterns, holds up well 10 years later ( )

Arrived Lausanne

A book that examines one of the seminal events of the 2008 financial crisis; the run that eventually led to the collapse and forced sale of Bear, Stearns & Co. to JPMorganChase. The book starts with the days leading up to the collapse, and then, in the second part, looks at the evolution of Bear, Stearns, going all the way back to the founding of the firm in the 1920s, and following the careers of some of the key players in the firm, like Cy Lewis and "Ace" Greenberg, and then, in a later generation, Jimmy Cayne. The author, I think, does a very good job of exploring the personalities and their quirks; the chemistry of the leadership of Bear, Stearns directly led to some of the issues that led to the firm's downfall. A lot of the financial terms that are involved in an explanation of why the firm went bust are a bit abstruse (I know some other commenters were puzzled by them), but again, the author does a pretty good job in explaining them. I happened to be on the very edges of what was going on here -- I was an employee of Merrill Lynch at the time. I can say that the author does a good job of evoking what was going on. Recommended for financial history mavens. ( )