Flash Boys

Description

The Master of the Big Story is back If you thought Wall Street was about alpha males standing in trading pits hollering at each other, think again. That world is dead. Now, the world's money is traded by computer code, inside black boxes in heavily guarded buildings. Even the experts entrusted with your cash don't know what's happening to it. And the very few who do aren't about to tell - because they're making a killing. This is a market that's rigged, out of control and out of sight; a market in which the chief need is for speed; and in which traders would sell their grandmothers for a microsecond. Blink, and you'll miss it. In Flash Boys, Michael Lewis tells the explosive story of how one group of ingenious oddballs and misfits set out to expose what was going on. It's the story of what it's like to declare war on some of the richest and most powerful people in the world. It's about taking on an entire system. And it's about the madness that has taken hold of the financial markets today. You won't believe it until you've read it.

Michael Lewis was born in New Orleans and educated at Princeton University and the London School of Economics. He has written several books including the New York Times bestsellers Liar's Poker, widely considered the book that defined Wall Street during the 1980s, The Big Short, 'probably the single best piece of financial journalism ever written' (Reuters), the breakneck tour of Europe's post-crunch economy, Boomerang, and the bestselling expose of high-speed financial scams, Flash Boys. Lewis is contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and writes for Vanity Fair and Portfolio magazine.

A beautiful narrative, so well-written. You've got to get this -- Jon Stewart * The Daily Show * Dazzling... guaranteed to make blood boil... riveting -- Janet Maslin * The New York Times * Enthralling -- John Naughton * Observer * Michael Lewis knows how to tell a story * Vanity Fair * This book has the potential to spark a cultural uprising . . . More than five years on from the Lehman collapse, Lewis has lit the touch paper on the mother of all debates about Wall Street and global finance -- Liam Halligan * Spectator * Compelling, a great yarn from beginning to end -- Daniel Finkelstein * The Times * When the stories of our times are told, there will be no more seminal documents than the books of Michael Lewis * Guardian * Who knew high-frequency trading was such a sexy subject? * Bloomberg Business Week * Michael Lewis is one of the premier chroniclers of our age * Huffington Post * Michael Lewis is a genius, and his book will give high-frequency trading a much-needed turn under the microscope -- Kevin Roose * New York Magazine * Flash Boys is remarkable for its moral outrage as it reveals how high-frequency traders have hoodwinked both investors and the public . . . He is that rare beast: an insider who writes lucid, jargon-free prose and who never loses track of his ultimate responsibility to the story * Daily Telegraph * Remarkable . . . Michael Lewis has a spellbinding talent for finding emotional dramas in complex, highly technical subjects * Financial Times * He tracks down the men who worked out what was going wrong and exposed it -- John Arlidge * Sunday Times * Score one for the humans! Critics of high speed, computer-driven trading have a new champion * CNN Money * If you own stock, you need to read Flash Boys . . . and then call your broker * Entertainment Weekly * Important to public debate about Wall Street . . . in exposing what one of his central characters calls the 'Pandora's box of ridiculousness' that financial exchanges have become -- Philip Delves Broughton * The Wall Street Journal * I read Michael Lewis for the same reasons I watch Tiger Woods. I'll never play like that. But it's good to be reminded every now and again what genius looks like -- Malcolm Gladwell Probably the best current writer in America -- Tom Wolfe