A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Leh man Brothers

US: The Crown Publishing Group, 2010. Paperback. Very Good. A copy that has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Leh man Brothers by Lawrence G. McDonald, Patrick Robinson One of the biggest questions of the financial crisis has not been answered until now. What happened at Lehman Brothers and why was it allowed to fail, with aftershocks that rocked the global economy? In this news-making, ofte n astonishing book, a former Lehman Brothers Vice President gives us the st raight answers-right from the belly of the beast. In A Colossal Failure of Common Sense, Larry McDonald, a Wall Street inside r, reveals, the culture and unspoken rules of the game like no book has eve r done. The book is couched in the very human story of Larry McDonald's Hor atio Alger-like rise from a Massachusetts "gateway to nowhere" housing proj ect to the New York headquarters of Lehman Brothers, home of one of the wor ld's toughest trading floors. We get a close-up view of the participants in the Lehman collapse, especial ly those who saw it coming with a helpless, angry certainty. We meet the Br ahmins at the top, whose reckless, pedal-to-the-floor addiction to growth f inally demolished the nation's oldest investment bank. The Wall Street we e ncounter here is a ruthless place, where brilliance, arrogance, ambition, g reed, capacity for relentless toil, and other human traits combine in a pot ent mix that sometimes fuels prosperity but occasionally destroys it. The full significance of the dissolution of Lehman Brothers remains to be measured. But this mu.