Den of Thieves

It’s one of the best books I read about the Wall Street, where you don’t want to jump over details. It has answers on every question you have reading, like the author read your mind.I highly recommend this book to understand how the world of finance work!

This book comes almost straight out of the courtroom and newspapers. The author mixed it with imagination and good writing into something that looks more like a good movie script than a story about corruption. James is a Wall Street Journal reporter and he knows his work very well; everything in the book is fact based and documented from public sources. Den of Thieves is an extensive collection of stories that follow individual destinies coming together in one of the most extraordinary decade in Wall Street history. When you read the book you feel more like you sit in front of a TV and someone is playing in front of you pieces of recordings made skilfully over a period of several years. In fact, you get into an intriguing action from the very beginning and the suspense keeps you awake for quite a while. There is so much detail that you will be amazed at of how James managed to put all together so well.The book is divided in two parts: Above the Law and The Chase. You get to see both sides of the story, both of them full of drama. I did not realise that the prosecutors had such a hard time until I read this book. It is not only a matter of legal technicality that explains some of the difficulties the law enforcements officers experienced in putting their case together (so they act "legally"), but it is also a matter of political interests that played such an important role in obstructing the application of the law. There are names more or less popular, some of them bordering celebrity status that come together and clash in a fight driven by conflicting interests. You read about people like Michael Milken, the guru of junk bonds, Ivan Boesky, the mysterious arbitrageur, Rudolph Giuliani, the famous mayor of NY, Martin Siegel, the investment banker that perfected the "poison pill" and many others. The law prevailed in the end but with such a great effort and pain, that one could not really imagine winners getting any joy out of this, maybe just a sense of relief that was all over.Overall this is a good book, it is easy to read, fast paced, and not technical at all. I wish it had more clarity in marking the dates. Sometimes is difficult to understand the succession of events and see clearly what caused what. You will need occasionally to go back a few pages just to get the sequence straight. Although the story is about people and James made an effort to build characters by putting thoughts into their heads as the events unfold, I had the impression that some sections where very much taken from court archived notes. Overall, Den of Thieves is a good book that you can use to travel back in time and understand what happened during 80's, the decade of greed.

Den of Thieves is a snapshot of human nature showing its seemy side. Stewart's book has a cast of characters you couldn't believe if it were a work of fiction. The most brilliant thing about "Den of Thieves" is the range of villians in the book; no two come to their law-breaking in the same manner or embrace it to the same degree. All of them find temptation (usually in the form of large heaps of easy money) too hard to resist.Stewart avoids the temptation to paint all of his law-breakers with the same brush and just focus in on the nuts and bolts of the story's timeline. Instead, he allows you to meet each individual and see how they became embroiled in Wall Street's worst scandal since the 1930s. You see some of the simple unrepentant scumbags you'd expect (Levine most closely fits the bill), but mostly you see more complex people. Milken comes off as a truly broken person who was never completely connected to reality in the same way most of us are. Most of the players come off as ordinary people who, on their own, would have cruised through their careers in uneventful fashion if not presented with a tempting, lawless option by a more proactive criminal. Each of the perpetrators has their own level of comfort with their involvement in the insider trading scheme. Some are so uncomfortable that they get out of the scheme on their own, some cry over the money they can't bring themselves to stop taking, and of course some just think they are God's gift to the financial world.You also get to see how law enforcement can work in a situation like this - sometimes it isn't very pretty. You come to realize that regulators and public prosecutors are imperfect people in imperfect situations, subject to their own set of desires, temptations and problems. Rudy Guliani's office prosecutes this case in the public eye while he positions himself to run for Mayor of NYC. The SEC unwittingly committs a huge insider trade of its own by allowing Ivan Boesky to unload his portfolio before the public announcement of his arrest and cooperation with authorities - so he can pay them his $100 million fine. (It seems temptation's not quite as far away as the authorities think).Great story. Great character development. Great lessons. Highly recommended.

Oldie, but goodie. very well written and keeps the reader glued to the book.Just as good as Barbarians at the Gate and that book about Enron (forgot the title, but not Danny Fastow).Buy and I guarantee you will have at least an enjoyable read.

I was continually astonished at how the author was able to make a highly technical series of events exciting to read.

Etwas zu sehr gehyptes Buch aber dennoch sehr lehsenswert.

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