Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World

Folks, if you want to understand what went down in Europe and how the obvious wasn't obvious enough to prevent a meltdown, well this is a book you must read! Easy read and not technical at all! Very inspirational from a strategy standpoint.

Liked it, but not mind blowing.

Great illustrations of various financial collapses, wrapped in culture biased antidotes. However, the book really does not build a case or make a point. It is like reading the first half of c s Lewis....a great backdrop is painted but the main characters never finish their journey. That said, read the book. It is worth 3 hours of your time to add perspective to the financial condition of our time.

a colloquial, easy read that finally explains the financial collapse in Europe and America. Interesting characters and stories bring visual clarity into an otherwise confusing part of history. This is a surprisingly fun read.

Michael Lewis gives a very readable and clear account of how the current financial crisis unfolded, not as a sudden collapse, but rather as a series of events in many different countries over a period of time. Each country gets its own chapter, and this works great until he comes to Germany. Lewis then gets sidetracked into a character assassination of the German psyche, using well-known expressions involving certain bodily functions to support his thesis, expressions all of which have counterparts in our own (American) language, BTW. This section seems unfounded and unsupported and it undermines the credibility of the rest of the narrative, which seemed so clear up to that point. Still, it is a good read and I came away feeling that I had a much better understanding of how it all developed, that it didn't start with gross misconduct by our own bankers (who got off Scott-free compared to the Germans, who paid a price) but that it went back at least to the financial debacle in Iceland (remember that one?) and that cheating the system is apparently endemic in some cultures who deceived their way into the EU and even now seem to be clueless as to how they got there.

Michael Lewis has done a wonderful job of outlining the quagmire we have all gotten ourselves into. At the end he makes it clear that we each must take personal responsibility for this. Working together to find a creative solution is our only hope.

A must read for anyone trying to figure out how we got into the financial mess we are in at the moment.

Every American citizen entitled to vote should be required to read this book. It clearly summarizes that we are a nation of addicts who cannot delay gratification and are sold political dope by the two main political parties, the Democrats and Republicans. Americans are emptying the teapot, and if we don't wise up and do the grown up things, which is the logical long term thinking and action, instead of buying the pandering pablum peddled by both the Republicans and Democrats. A great book that explains our present ecconomic situationd and the foreshadowing that we have more pain to come.

Explains in simple english, causes for the crises in several nations and rounds out with how much of a hole we are in as a nation…

Great book.....this and the Big Short gave me great insight into what happened in the financial meltdown of 2007--2012. Jim Carns