Martin Vander Weyer
Gods of the Gaps
Flash Boys: Cracking the Money Code
By Michael Lewis
Allen Lane/The Penguin Press 274pp £20 order from our bookshop
Michael Lewis is in a class of his own. Not in the sense that he is uniquely gifted (though Tom Wolfe says he’s ‘probably the best current writer in America’), but in the sense that the launch of another of his forays into the financial jungle is an event to compare with, in her day, J K Rowling’s delivery of another volume of Harry Potter. The question is not whether the new book is better than anything else in its sector this season, but whether it maintains the mould-breaking standard set by its own author.
In Lewis’s case the benchmark was Liar’s Poker, his hilarious 1989 account of his career as a bond salesman with the Wall Street firm of Salomon Brothers in New York and London. It was wickedly observant and, together with Oliver Stone’s 1987 film Wall Street, it crystallised the popular collective
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'It’s long been known that there is an optimum reproductive window and that women enjoy a considerably shorter one than men. For both sexes this window is opening and closing earlier than it used to.' (£)
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-end-of-babies
Sixty years ago today, the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to enter outer space. @Andrew_Crumey looks at his role in the space race.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/one-giant-leap-for-mankind
On the night of 5th July 1809, a group of soldiers kidnapped Pope Pius VII on the orders of Napoleon Bonaparte. Munro Price looks at what happened next.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/bonaparte-meets-his-match