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Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt (Hardcover)

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Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt By Michael Lewis Cover Image
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Staff Reviews


Michael Lewis (The Big Short, Moneyball, The Blind Side) returns to the financial world with a new book that gives readers a ringside seat as the biggest story in years prepares to hit Wall Street. His past works on the financial industry are game-changing examinations of the most important financial issues of our time: expect the same from Flash Boys. Definitely one of the most-anticipated books of the season.

Description


Four years after his #1 bestseller The Big Short, Michael Lewis returns to Wall Street to report on a high-tech predator stalking the equity markets.


Flash Boys is about a small group of Wall Street guys who figure out that the U.S. stock market has been rigged for the benefit of insiders and that, post–financial crisis, the markets have become not more free but less, and more controlled by the big Wall Street banks. Working at different firms, they come to this realization separately; but after they discover one another, the flash boys band together and set out to reform the financial markets. This they do by creating an exchange in which high-frequency trading—source of the most intractable problems—will have no advantage whatsoever.


The characters in Flash Boys are fabulous, each completely different from what you think of when you think “Wall Street guy.” Several have walked away from jobs in the financial sector that paid them millions of dollars a year. From their new vantage point they investigate the big banks, the world’s stock exchanges, and high-frequency trading firms as they have never been investigated, and expose the many strange new ways that Wall Street generates profits.


The light that Lewis shines into the darkest corners of the financial world may not be good for your blood pressure, because if you have any contact with the market, even a retirement account, this story is happening to you. But in the end, Flash Boys is an uplifting read. Here are people who have somehow preserved a moral sense in an environment where you don’t get paid for that; they have perceived an institutionalized injustice and are willing to go to war to fix it.



About the Author


Michael Lewis is the best-selling author of Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, The Blind Side, The Big Short, The Undoing Project, and The Fifth Risk. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his family.

Praise For…


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

If you read one business book this year, make it Flash Boys.

— David Sirota - Salon

Dazzling… guaranteed to make blood boil… riveting.
— Janet Maslin - The New York Times

A beautiful narrative, so well-written. You’ve got to get this.
— Jon Stewart - The Daily Show

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

Michael Lewis knows how to tell a story.
— Vanity Fair

Remarkable… Michael Lewis has a spellbinding talent for finding emotional dramas in complex, highly technical subjects.
— Financial Times

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

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

Flash Boys richly deserves to be the first chapter in a new discussion of market rules and abuses… Lewis raises troubling and necessary questions.

— The American Conservative

When it comes to narrative skill, a reporter’s curiosity and an uncanny instinct for the pulse of the zeitgeist, Lewis is a triple threat.
— James B. Stewart - New York Times

[Lewis] is a top-flight storyteller.
— Lev Grossman - Time

A fast-paced tale backed by gutsy reporting.
— Tina Jordan - Entertainment Weekly

A tour de force that will grab and hold your attention like the best of thrillers.
— Jon Talton - Seattle Times

Lewis writes about the resilience of underdogs, even in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds. He’s doing essential work, and anything that embarrasses fat cats and encourages reform is a flash in the right direction.
— Julie Hinds - Detroit Free Press

Lewis simply tells the truth.
— Will Deener - Dallas News

Michael Lewis has another hit on his hands.
— Zachary Warmbrodt and Dave Clarke - Politico

[Lewis’s] ability to find compelling characters and tell a great story through their eyes is unparalleled. He can untangle complex subjects like few others. His prose sparkles.
— Joe Nocera - New York Times

Fascinating.
— Steven Pearlstein - The Washington Post

Lewis, as always, is exceedingly good at describing the complexities and absurdities of the subculture he portrays here… A deeply entertaining book, and one that illuminates how much our world has changed in less than a decade.
— Hector Tobar - Los Angeles Times

As always, Lewis simplifies the complex—and makes it fascinating.
— People

Recommended… Entertaining.
— San Francisco Chronicle

Entirely engaging… Illuminates a part of Wall Street that has generally done business in the shadows.
— New York Review of Books


Coverage from NPR



Product Details
ISBN: 9780393244663
ISBN-10: 0393244660
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Publication Date: March 31st, 2014
Pages: 288
Language: English
ABA Admin Product Details
Data Source: ONIX
Created At: 3/7/2014 08:25am
Last Updated At: 3/16/2024 08:40pm