Featuring an exclusive interview with the writer, ‘America’s poet laureate of capital’ (The Los Angeles Times)

When it comes to markets, the first fatal sin is certainly greed. In Anxiety!, #1 bestselling author Michael Lewis offers chosen several bits of excellent journalism to light up probably the most violent and pricey upheavals in recent financial history: the Crash of ’87, the Russian Default (and the subsequent collapse of Long Term Capital Administration), the Asian Money Crisis of 1999, the web about Anxiety!: THE STORYPLOT of Modern Financial Insanity Bubble, and the current Sub-Prime Mortgage Disaster. Among the unabridged choices are several pieces by Lewis himself, whose writing also introduces each section, aswell as contributions from Nobel Prize-winner Paul Krugman, Wayne Surowiecki and others writing in Fortune, THE BRAND NEW Yorker and THE BRAND NEW York Times.

Some of the pieces paint the disposition and market elements before the particular crash, or display what people believed was happening at that time. Others, with the blissful luxury of hindsight, analyze what actually happened. You will find sobering messages common to these narratives: the lessons which should have been learned on the way were for the most part ignored; so when push comes to shove — when all investors run to the same side of the boat — the properly devised protections against risk turn out to be wishful thinking.

As demonstrated in Liar’s Texas holdem, The New New Thing, and Moneyball, Lewis is without peer in his understanding of marketplace forces and of human foibles. He is also, arguably, the funniest significant writer in the us.