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Original Essays | April 29, 2013

Edward Lee: IMG How to Clarify Butter: A Writer's Tale

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Chefs don't have time to write. While I was working on Smoke and Pickles, I was running a restaurant — a daily regimen of testing recipes,... Continue »
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Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World

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Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World Cover

ISBN13: 9780393343441
ISBN10: 0393343448
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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

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.

Icelanders wanted to stop fishing and become investment bankers. The Greeks wanted to turn their country into a piñata 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.

Michael Lewis's investigation of bubbles beyond our shores is so brilliantly, sadly hilarious that it leads the American reader to a comfortable complacency: oh, those foolish foreigners. But when he 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.

Review:

"Lewis shows again why he is the leading journalist of his generation." Kyle Smith, Forbes

Review:

"[Lewis's] explanations of thorny financial processes are surprisingly compelling, his characters entertaining." Jessica Loudis

Review:

"Lewis's rare gift as a guide through the world of credit default swaps and sovereign debt doesn't come simply from his deep understanding of how the global financial system works...but also from his skill as a storyteller, his ability to tell the larger tale through fascinating human stories of greed, excess, and self-delusion." BookForum

Review:

"Michael Lewis possesses the rare storyteller's ability to make virtually any subject both lucid and compelling....Combining his easy familiarity with finance and the talents of a travel writer, Mr. Lewis sets off in these pages to give the reader a guided tour through some of the disparate places hard hit by the fiscal tsunami of 2008, like Greece, Iceland and Ireland, tracing how very different people for very different reasons gorged on the cheap credit available in the prelude to that disaster. The book — based on articles Mr. Lewis wrote for Vanity Fair magazine — is a companion piece of sorts to The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, his bestselling 2010 book about the fiscal crisis....Mr. Lewis's ability to find people who can see what is obvious to others only in retrospect or who somehow embody something larger going on in the financial world is uncanny. And in this book he weaves their stories into a sharp-edged narrative that leaves readers with a visceral understanding of the fiscal recklessness that lies behind today's headlines about Europe's growing debt problems and the risk of contagion they now pose to the world." Chuck Leddy Boston Globe

Review:

"Michael Lewis possesses the rare storyteller's ability to make virtually any subject both lucid and compelling....Combining his easy familiarity with finance and the talents of a travel writer, Mr. Lewis sets off in these pages to give the reader a guided tour through some of the disparate places hard hit by the fiscal tsunami of 2008, like Greece, Iceland and Ireland, tracing how very different people for very different reasons gorged on the cheap credit available in the prelude to that disaster. The book — based on articles Mr. Lewis wrote for Vanity Fair magazine — is a companion piece of sorts to The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, his bestselling 2010 book about the fiscal crisis....Mr. Lewis's ability to find people who can see what is obvious to others only in retrospect or who somehow embody something larger going on in the financial world is uncanny. And in this book he weaves their stories into a sharp-edged narrative that leaves readers with a visceral understanding of the fiscal recklessness that lies behind today's headlines about Europe's growing debt problems and the risk of contagion they now pose to the world." Michiko Kakutani

Review:

"Lewis's rare gift as a guide through the world of credit default swaps and sovereign debt doesn't come simply from his deep understanding of how the global financial system works...but also from his skill as a storyteller, his ability to tell the larger tale through fascinating human stories of greed, excess, and self-delusion." New York Times
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About the Author

Michael Lewis, the best-selling author of Liar's Poker, The Money Culture, The New New Thing, Moneyball, The Blind Side, Panic, Home Game, The Big Short, and Boomerang, among other works, lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and three children.
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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
illegitimi non carborundum, October 9, 2012 (view all comments by illegitimi non carborundum)
I picked up this book on a whim while waiting for a 6 AM flight to Berkeley, and when you've read all the Malcolm Gladwell you can stomach you do the next best thing and read a best seller for which he wrote a sterling recommendation. This quick read did not disappoint. Lewis describes the back story of the global financial meltdown, which as we now know was easy come, not so easy go. We see the world awash with cheap credit determined to follow it's myriad fantasies and indebt itself to the future with a sum not so easily repaid. Lord of flies meets Wallstreet. How and why could all of this happen? Boomerang is a deftly and humorously written account of Lewis' behind the scenes investigations and interviews with major players as well as prophetic doomsayers that called this mess for what it is, avoidable human folly. He takes us to bankrupt Iceland, to the freshly built ghost towns of Ireland and even to a monastery on the sparsely populated rocky shores of Greece where the abbots are rumored to have been the epicenter of that country's financial collapse. He travels to Texas to interview billionaire Kyle Bass, one of the very few who has profited by betting on financial collapse. Then proceeds to hang out with Mr. Bass, who enjoys blowing up beaver dams while driving around his thousands of remote acres in a machine gun equipped army jeep. He interviews German bankers and even a neuroscientist as he searches for clues and answers to weave into a well built and colorful narrative for us. Lewis finally drops us off at the end of the book in Vallejo, CA where the recently bankrupt municipal government struggles to survive, find answers and move on. As the baby boomers retire, becoming the immensely top heavy geriatric demographic of our society, is Vallejo the blueprint for our immanent collapse?
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780393343441
Subtitle:
Travels in the New Third World
Author:
Lewis, Michael
Publisher:
W. W. Norton & Company
Subject:
Economic Conditions
Subject:
Economics - General
Publication Date:
20120931
Binding:
TRADE PAPER
Language:
English
Pages:
240
Dimensions:
8.25 x 5.5 in
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Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World New Trade Paper
0 stars - 0 reviews
$16.95 In Stock
Product details 240 pages W. W. Norton & Company - English 9780393343441 Reviews:
"Review" by , "Lewis shows again why he is the leading journalist of his generation."
"Review" by , "[Lewis's] explanations of thorny financial processes are surprisingly compelling, his characters entertaining."
"Review" by , "Lewis's rare gift as a guide through the world of credit default swaps and sovereign debt doesn't come simply from his deep understanding of how the global financial system works...but also from his skill as a storyteller, his ability to tell the larger tale through fascinating human stories of greed, excess, and self-delusion."
"Review" by , "Michael Lewis possesses the rare storyteller's ability to make virtually any subject both lucid and compelling....Combining his easy familiarity with finance and the talents of a travel writer, Mr. Lewis sets off in these pages to give the reader a guided tour through some of the disparate places hard hit by the fiscal tsunami of 2008, like Greece, Iceland and Ireland, tracing how very different people for very different reasons gorged on the cheap credit available in the prelude to that disaster. The book — based on articles Mr. Lewis wrote for Vanity Fair magazine — is a companion piece of sorts to The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, his bestselling 2010 book about the fiscal crisis....Mr. Lewis's ability to find people who can see what is obvious to others only in retrospect or who somehow embody something larger going on in the financial world is uncanny. And in this book he weaves their stories into a sharp-edged narrative that leaves readers with a visceral understanding of the fiscal recklessness that lies behind today's headlines about Europe's growing debt problems and the risk of contagion they now pose to the world."
"Review" by , "Michael Lewis possesses the rare storyteller's ability to make virtually any subject both lucid and compelling....Combining his easy familiarity with finance and the talents of a travel writer, Mr. Lewis sets off in these pages to give the reader a guided tour through some of the disparate places hard hit by the fiscal tsunami of 2008, like Greece, Iceland and Ireland, tracing how very different people for very different reasons gorged on the cheap credit available in the prelude to that disaster. The book — based on articles Mr. Lewis wrote for Vanity Fair magazine — is a companion piece of sorts to The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, his bestselling 2010 book about the fiscal crisis....Mr. Lewis's ability to find people who can see what is obvious to others only in retrospect or who somehow embody something larger going on in the financial world is uncanny. And in this book he weaves their stories into a sharp-edged narrative that leaves readers with a visceral understanding of the fiscal recklessness that lies behind today's headlines about Europe's growing debt problems and the risk of contagion they now pose to the world."
"Review" by , "Lewis's rare gift as a guide through the world of credit default swaps and sovereign debt doesn't come simply from his deep understanding of how the global financial system works...but also from his skill as a storyteller, his ability to tell the larger tale through fascinating human stories of greed, excess, and self-delusion."
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