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Summary: Just brilliant!
Review: There's no other word to describe this book. I haven't laughed out loud this many times while reading any other book I can remember. A must read for anyone who has ever worked in Corporate America and especially the investment/finance business. A charmingly witty and brilliant inside look at the game of snakes and ladders the investment banking industry can be....
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Summary: Still great many years later
Review: Being a sports fanatic, I started into Michael Lewis' work with Moneyball, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The crossover to the realm of investment banking has been just as entertaining. Even though Liar's poker was first published when I was young child, I found it very insightful and educational. The flow of the book was consistent and kept my attention span of a young adult. I could not put this book down. A great read for the young and old.
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Summary: Entertaining
Review: From Art history major to Bond trading geek at Investment Banking firm of Salomon Brothers, Michael Lewis, in a lovely, humorous way, describes his career journey - and with a lot of peppered wit and honesty. His description of his entry into the firm of the stinking rich and moderately restrained team of Bond Traders was funny, I thought. So was the description of the BSDs (Big Swinging D***) and their attitudes. There are many such instances in this great bookHe describes with great detail, and often with shocking honesty, the way the Bond Trading firms then worked. In fact, I strongly recommend this book to anyone remotely interested in the way Wall Street firms have worked, and the way they have earned their money, and continue to do so, Eric Spitzer or no Eric Spitzer! He writes charmingly, and the narrative is often captivating. Entertaining and Unputdownable..!! Readers could also follow this book up with 'When Genius Failed', which continues with the story of greed and danger (and Merriwether !)
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Summary: Classic Wall Street Entertainment
Review: Michael Lewis is such a good writer; he makes you feel as if are working next to him at Salomon Brothers. His take on Wall Street is hilarious. This may be the best of all of Mr. Lewis's books. It is arguably the most entertaining. One of Mr. Lewis's Liar's Poker classmates just wrote a book for serious finance professionals and explains how Wall Street professionals try to take advantage of each other using structured finance products. I highly recommend Janet Tavakoli's "Collateralized Debt Obligations and Structured Finance".
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Summary: one of the funnies book I have ever read
Review: Fascinating! All finance majors who dream to work on Wall Street must read it. Once I started reading it, I couldn't put it down. This is one of the funnies books I have ever read.
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Summary: Thrilling Account of Antiquated Management and Decadence
Review: Liar's Poker provides the reader with a wonderful account of one of Wall Street's most formiddable houses being left by the wayside. Embodied in the compensation structure at the firm, Lewis' tale describes vast numbers of star employees fleeing Salomon for greener pastures. This book gives an excellent account of how a once mighty firm was driven into the ground by the haplessness of an ineffective board personified by John Gutfreund. Without doubt, this is one fo the finest accounts of what really happens on Wall Street that one will read. It truly dives into the depths of ignorance on the trading floors where no one truly knows what they are doing or where their futures will lead them. I fully recommend this book to anyone interested in the greed and decadence that plagued the 80s culture. For the business buff, this is a combination of humor and sadness of a once great firm that cannot and should not be missed.
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Summary: One hand, one million dollars, no tears.
Review: In the 1980's, Michael Lewis was a neophyte bond salesman for Salomon Brothers in New York and London for four years. Liar's Poker is a high-stakes game the traders, salesmen, and executives play each afternoon, but it is also a metaphor for the Salomon culture of extreme risk-taking with immediate payoffs and clear winners and losers. This is the story of how Lewis survived the training program, inept but mean-spirited management, an aborted take-over even featuring a white knight, layoffs and the 1987 market crash before quitting to find his real calling as a business journalist. While Lewis's career did not take off quickly, he eventually became a highly paid producer, although not in the league of the true top dogs. Lewis tells the real story of Wall Street in both go-go and crash days with self-deprecating humor enlivened with his ecletic wit. Colorful and well-known Wall Street characters appear such as Michael Milken, Lazlo Birini, Warren Buffett, Bill Simon, Sr. and John Guetfruend. All business students need to read this as even those with advanced degrees in finance such as myself, will learn how things really work. The story of how the junk bond and collateralized mortgage backed security markets emerge is told to fill in a chapter in financial history. Perhaps most interesting is some of the political machinations, rampant at Salomon, which lead for example for Salomon to ignore the junk bond market, allowing others to flourish and eventually attempt to take-over Salomon using junk bonds. Lewis also describes for all investors the conflicts of interest and lack of governance on Wall Street long before Eliot Spitzer and Arthur Levitt became the champions of the little guy. My next step is to read Lewis's later books.
Rating: 
Summary: Great read
Review: Lewis'accounts of the bond trader is not to be missed. Don't pass this one up if you like Monkey Business or Barbarian at the Gates.
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Summary: Poisonously insightful, hysterically funny!
Review: As a business school student, I cannot thank the author enough for introducing almost everything on Investment banking and financial maket in the rawest depiction. The book is not only educational to any investors in any form..., but deliciously entertaining. MUST READ!
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Summary: The gold standard
Review: I have read a lot of 'insider' accounts of high finance and I am amazed by how much they all seem to owe Michael Lewis for writing "Liar's Poker." From "Monkey Business" to works of fiction like "All I Could Get" to even movies such as "Boiler Room," all of them seem to have borrowed heavily from Lairs Poker. In this book Lewis tells the story of Solomon Brothers from its ascendancy from a small bond trading house, to the world's most profitable corporation to it's decline and eventual reorganization. Lewis narrates his story from the perspective he had as a Solomon bond salesman in the mid 1980's. This book shows off two of Michael Lewis best talents: 1.) The ability to covey the feeling of how it was while he was there.
2) The ability to write about events/activities in the past (or halfway around the world) AS IF HE WERE THERE. In this book, Lewis is a witness, a critic and a historian all at the same time and in comes together well. Reading this book, I kept think that Michael Lewis is too observant, insightful, and people-oriented to stay on Wall St. Maybe deciding to write this book, getting himself out of Solomon while getting back at his superiors, was just another smart trade. Maybe someday I'll read another 'insider' account book that will blow me way, but for now "Liar's Poker" is the gold standard for the genre.
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