Moreover, while it did little to sap the pleasure of this read, the book I know without question was occasionally inaccurate. Few interviewed about Lehman’s last days, including myself, counted the beads of sweat on our foreheads. Yet it defies common sense to accept his verbatim account of grimaces, gasps, and wily smiles as the product of interviews – even five hundred hours of them.

And where his access exceeded mine, most of what he writes rings true. But just how objective is Too Big to Fail and to what extent does the author connect the dots where he found himself with empty spaces?Īs a former Lehmanite I know most of what Sorkin describes is true. You virtually hear the beating of hearts.

But have aspects of the story been as illusorily packaged as subprime bonds that once masqueraded as low risk securities? In short, Sorkin spins a great tale placing us all in the rooms where events unfolded. This borderline voyeuristic account is at times a version of events as expressed by high profile players managing their very public legacies. No doubt, Sorkin relied far more heavily on some of his 200 sources than others. Indeed, it was striking that after so many interviews the story, as pieced together, seemed to almost exclusively reflect the rarified world of the most elite power brokers in Washington and on Wall Street. Yet, without knowing specifics about the pedigree of his telling, Sorkin’s journalistic protection of sources leaves critics with little to challenge. A sense of Sorkin’s singular access permeates the book. This early announcement lends credibility to the next hundreds of pages, while also cleverly freeing Sorkin’s hand to inject unlimited poetic license. He makes note of 200 interviews conducted over 500 hundred hours – all with individuals who remain anonymous. Sorkin begins Too Big to Fail ingeniously. This is high praise coming from an author who has covered much of the same territory. And while I must admit that my interest waned slightly over the last hundred pages or so, for most of Sorkin’s ride I was fixated. Indeed, so detailed is this account that at times I wondered whether the author’s telling of concurrent events actually consumed more time than the events themselves. Too Big to Fail is by far the most detailed blow-by-blow account of the days that changed America’s financial landscape forever, and the narrative is both immediately engaging and propulsive. Sorkin has assembled, with the assistance of a team of researchers, what many regard as the definitive financial crisis book.

As the author of another book primarily or wholly focused on Lehman Brothers ( OTC:LEHMQ) I was pleased by the promise of finally sharing the space with a quality writer. I greatly anticipated the release of Sorkin’s book.

Too big to fail andrew sorkin