Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780393081817)

The tsunami of cheap credit that rolled across the planet between 2002 and 2008 was more than a simple financial phenomenon: it was temptation, offering entire societies the chance to reveal aspects of their characters they could not normally afford to indulge.

Icelanders wanted to stop fishing and become investment bankers. The Greeks wanted to turn their country into a pinata stuffed with cash and allow as many citizens as possible to take a whack at it. The Germans wanted to be even more German; the Irish wanted to stop being Irish.

Michael Lewis's investigation of bubbles beyond our shores is so brilliantly, sadly hilarious that it leads the American reader to a comfortable complacency: oh, those foolish foreigners. But when he turns a merciless eye on California and Washington, DC, we see that the narrative is a trap baited with humor, and we understand the reckoning that awaits the greatest and greediest of debtor nations.

Author: Michael Lewis
ISBN-10: 0393081818
ISBN-13: 9780393081817
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Language: English
Published: 10/03/2011
Pages: 224
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.87lbs
Size: 8.48h x 5.86w x 0.88d

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 01/01/2011 pg. 65
Library Journal Prepub Alert 01/01/2011 pg. 65
Poder Hispanic 10/01/2011 pg. 84
Publishers Weekly Best Books 11/07/2011 pg. 32
Entertainment Weekly 11/18/2011 pg. 107
Kirkus Reviews 11/15/2011
New York Review of Books 12/08/2011 pg. 16
Publishers Weekly 11/14/2011
Publishers Weekly 12/05/2011
Men's Journal 12/01/2011 pg. 44
Choice 02/01/2012