This book was recommended to me as THE book on the Boesky-Milken criminal complex aka Wall Street during the 1980s and on the culture of investment banking in general. It really is a great read, and you don’t have to know much about investment banking, securities & bonds. Stewart does a great job explaining the basal structures and some of the financial & legal intricacies of the deals that eventually brought down Milken, Boesky et al. I especially liked his factual style and even-handed account of what was going on between his main protagonists. His own moral position is clear, he never succumbs to being fascinated by his protagonists, but he keeps his text mostly free of judgemental statements. The book would have profited from some more contextualising of the investment banking world into the larger context of 1980s Reagonomics.

A respectable account of the most significant insider trading scandal of all time as well as Michael Milken, the most rapid accumulator of wealth at that time. Den of Thieves is doomed to be remembered as a history book, though. While the author managed to wring every drop of fun out of this storyline, which was drawn out beyond any bystander's control, it often enters dull and tedious stretches. This former New York Times bestseller has been featured on dusty shelves across the country with bookmarks hanging out somewhere around page 206.

Reading this book is kind of like visiting a place for the first time after hearing glowing reviews from your friends. It's new to you, to a degree, and you feel social pressure to remain upbeat and engaged even as you hit snags of disappointment. Den of Thieves is comparable to Barbarians at the Gate in many ways—thickness, setting Guinness World Records for number of names contained in a book, subject matter—but the story is muddled by litigation and can't be placed on the same plane of greatness.

Aside from John Mulheren, the entire supporting cast is totally forgettable by the time you make it to the last three chapters. Even Ivan Boesky, who stars prominently early on. Don't get me started on the SEC or the law firms of lawyers, lawyers, and lawyers. Overall, there is way too much zooming in and out for one to keep track of any of the main players.

I highly recommend reading Barbarians at the Gate before this book, so you'll have a more thorough background of the subject matter, and saving Fortune's Formula for after, as it reuses some of the most interesting factoids and will cheapen the experience.

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This book took me awhile to get through. Dense and a little tricky to keep all the people/businesses/relationships straight but the overall story was shocking. Insider trading between big names on Wall Street and their eventual demise. It was so interesting but also made me wonder how often this is going on under the radar. It made me feel like a lot.

A few thoughts:

-The greed of the subjects of this book is just disgusting. This book is assiduously researched and extremely well-written, but the laudatory adjectives and exaltation of a banker’s lifestyle as glamorous and something we should aspire to is stomach-turning. They’re criminals.

-It’s way too long. I have a self-flagellative need to finish a book once I’ve started it, but all I could think was…when will this book end? Then: will it ever end? Mercifully, after almost 600 pages, it does. But the length doesn’t add any value. This could have been a 300-page page-turner, but the detailed descriptions of lawyers, bankers, traders, and lawyers was too much to bear.

-Skip it unless you need a detailed account of securities frayed in THIS period of time. Otherwise, you won’t gain much insight applicable to other situations (other than, spoiler, bankers are greedy.)

I had an audible edition of this book. I think listening instead of reading made the book more enjoyable as there were many parts of the book that contained "lingo" or "buzz words" that I simply did not know. If I had been reading, I would have wasted time trying to discover the meaning. I did not get that opportunity while listening (usually while commuting to work), so the book merely continued without explanation. That was fine, as it turns out the average reader does not need to know the terms and the ins and outs of Wall Street to thoroughly enjoy a story of lying, deceit, greed, arrogance, and incompetence.

This book holds up surprisingly well and is a healthy reminder for all investors that historically, the Industrial Financial Complex has been closer to an enemy than a "trusted wealth adviser" more often than it would like you to remember.

The author does a very good job of making a set of very complex crimes understandable and engaging. I was of an age to be hearing about this daily on NPR when these stories broke - and I still learned a lot in reading this book.

If you're wondering how the culture of a bank could become as slimy as Wells Fargo has been in recent years, look to the past - cheating the customer is a fine Wall Street tradition. They even are a bit progressive with their theft - the more money that you spend with them, the more they tend to steal!

The greed of these characters is astounding - keep that in mind when you hear the protests coming from the street about regulation, about "the high cost of doing business" -- All hogs squeal when you pull their heads from the trough. It doesn't mean they are terribly hungry - just angry to have their eating interrupted.

It was so bad at the time and so shocking. Reading this book a bit late and after the financial crisis, I feel like yeah, whatever. It feels much worse now and it's hardly even litigated by the SEC anymore. But it's still a great story of how this sort of crime becomes so tempting, so easy to commit, and so hard to root out.

I was familiar with the history of Wall Street in the late 70’s and through the 80’s. While I wasn’t in the securities industry, it appeared to even my distant observations that there were some shenanigans going on. I was aware of Ivan Boesky and to a degree, Michael Milkin. My familiarity with the characters and storylines made this non-fiction narrative easier to follow. The only challenge was the multitude of characters and corporations and at times the author’s efforts to provide the necessary detail made the narrative rather slow.

However, the story was compelling. The fraudulent activities were striking, but the continuing claims of innocence by some of the major players was the most disturbing. It certainly makes you wonder about the ethics in our society, but you are also forced to ask yourself if you were faced with a similar opportunity, how would you handle it. I found it disappointing, despite the United States federal government efforts, the degree to which some of the worst players escaped relatively unscathed. I was not aware, until reading this, the degree that Michael Milkin reigned supreme and the subserviency of Ivan Boesky’s role. Of course, you would really like to know what all the major players think of events and their behavior looking back, but that insight is not available.

Sự cuốn hút của cuốn sách ngay từ đầu đến từ những cái tên có liên quan tới các hành vi phạm tội liên quan tới giao dịch nội gián: Drexel Burnham Lambert, Goldman Sachs hay Micheal Milken - những ngôi sao đầu tư cổ phiếu "rác" trong thập niên 80. Các hành động của những cá nhân, doanh nghiệp này đều hết sức tinh vi, khiến cho người thường hay cơ quan điều tra khó lòng hiểu hết. Bằng nghiệp vụ và sự nhạy cảm của những con sói hàng đầu Wall Street, họ tìm ra các cơ hội để ăn chênh lệch từ những vụ thâu tóm; hay táo bạo hơn, họ tạo ra những vụ thâu tóm để thu những khoản lợi khổng lồ.

Dù vậy, sau cùng tất cả đã phải trả giá về hành vi của mình khi làm mất tính toàn vẹn của thị trường. Tổ điều tra của UBCK Mỹ và Bộ Tài chính có 6 năm lăn lộn để hiểu được sự phức tạp trong các giao dịch, các sản phẩm hay các lệnh đặt để đưa những "ông trùm" ra ánh sáng. Đã có lúc tưởng như các "sói già phố Wall" đã giành chiến thắng, song hệ thống tư pháp đã thành công đưa họ ra vành móng ngựa và bồi thường cho các hành vi thao túng của mình.

Với giọng văn cuốn hút, James B. Stewart tiếp tục thể hiện bản lĩnh của một cây viết điều tra xuất sắc. Cùng với đó, người đọc có thể thấy sự tìm tòi và khả năng diễn đạt của ông với một lĩnh vực khó nhằn với đại chúng - đầu tư chứng khoán. 5 sao là xứng đáng với cuốn sách.

An interesting story and I learned a lot, but it is more detailed than I needed. There are whole chapters where ten or more characters are introduced on every page. For me, even though I often love nonfiction finance stories, this kind of detail was a little overwhelming.

> They had allowed Boesky to wind down his position only to encourage market stability, and to guarantee that the government would get paid its $100 million. It had never occurred to them that it would be interpreted as helping Boesky trade in advance on his own inside information that he was going to plead guilty and settle SEC charges.

death to all finance bros

As a teenager in the 80s, I had a paper delivery route. I remember reading about this story back then, and wondering what the truth was behind it all. Though largely forgotten now, this financial scandal was a huge deal back then. Written then (published in the early 90s), Stewart's book is a detailed, blow-by-blow description of how it happened, how it was discovered, how it was proved, and how it was prosecuted. Along the way, he paints detailed portraits of the primary characters, and of the culture of the Wall Street era in which it happened. In the final analysis, the words of Christ ring true millennia later: "What shall it profit a man, if he should gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

Well-written, if not quite compelling, if this is your jam you will find this an interesting work.