House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street

A blistering narrative account of the negligence and greed that pushed all of Wall Street into chaos and the country into a financial crisis.
 
At the beginning of March 2008, the monetary fabric of Bear Stearns, one of the world’s oldest and largest investment banks, began unraveling. After ten days, the bank no longer existed, its assets sold under duress to rival JPMorgan Chase. The effects would be felt nationwide, as the country suddenly found itself in the grip of the worst financial mess since the Great Depression. William Cohan exposes the corporate arrogance, power struggles, and deadly combination of greed and inattention, which led to the collapse of not only Bear Stearns but the very foundations of Wall Street.

“Praise for theNew York Timesbestseller THE LAST TYCOONS, winner of the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award "Cohan's portrayal of the firm's dominant partners-whose gargantuan appetites and mercurial habits provide the unifying force behind the book's operatic melodramas- makes this an epic. . . . In fact,The Last Tycoonsbears a striking resemblance to F. Scott Fitzgerald'sThe Last Tycoon." -New York Times Book Review "Breezy and highly readable. . . . For those of us who enjoy high-level gossip (most people) and an inside look at the machinations, triumphs, failures, and foibles of some of Wall Street's and America's most exalted personages, Cohan's book is entertaining and seductively engrossing." -Chicago Tribune "Cohan's thoroughness-he interviewed over 100 current and former bankers and assorted bigwigs-unearths a trove of colourful tidbits, many quite racy. . . . Illuminating are Mr. Cohan's descriptions of the scheming, politicking, and general dysfunction that was Lazard." -Economist "Cohan not only knows where the bodies are buried but got a guided tour of the graveyard." -Financial Times "[The Last Tycoons] has sent a jolt through Lazard and the rest of Wall Street." -Wall Street Journal”

“Engrossing . . . a parable about how the second Gilded Age came slamming to a fast and furious end. . . . Riveting, edge-of-the-seat reading.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
 
“Cohan's epic account chronicles a watershed moment in Wall Street history.” —The Boston Globe
 
"Masterfully reported. . . . [Cohan] does a brilliant job of sketching in the eccentric, vulgar, greedy, profane and coarse individuals who ignored all these warnings to their own profit and the ruin of so many others."--Los Angeles Times
 
"A masterly reconstruction of Bear Stearns’ implosion—a tumultuous episode in Wall Street history that still reverberates throughout our economy today. . . . First drafts of history don't get much better than this." —Bloomberg News
 
“This book is so rich, so flavorful, so instructive, and so fully and compelling cast that a reviewer hardly knows where to begin.” —The New York Observer
 
"Cohan vividly documents the mix of arrogance, greed, recklessness, and pettiness that took down the 86-year-old brokerage house and then the entire economy. It's a page-turner . . . offering both a seemingly comprehensive understanding of the business and wide access to insiders. . . . Hard to put down." —BusinessWeek
 
"[A]n authoritative, blow-by-blow account of the collapse of Bear Stearns." —The Washington Post
 
“Cohen’s autopsy uncovers all the symptoms of a walking disaster.” —Newsweek  
 
"A riveting blow-by-blow account." —The Economist

WILLIAM D. COHAN, a former senior Wall Street investment banker, is the bestselling author of The Last Tycoons and the winner of the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He is an online columnist for The New York Times, and writes frequently for Vanity Fair, Fortune, ArtNews, The Financial Times, the Washington Post and the Daily Beast.  He also appears frequently on CNN, Bloomberg TV and CNBC, and also on numerous NPR shows.

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