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The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > So what Non-Fiction have you read?
 
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Grifter
Jul 24, 2003

I do this technique called a suplex. You probably haven't heard of it, it's pretty obscure.

Guy A. Person posted:

The Big Short is a pretty good look into the 2008 financial crisis from the point of view of different investors who made money by betting against subprime mortgages. My main complaint is that it works a little too hard to glorify a group of people for knowing that the collapse was coming and essentially choosing to profit from it instead of trying to stop it. Obviously he does point out instances where they did try to warn people and they weren't listened to, but these guys still come off pretty sleazy themselves at certain points. This and a few of Lewis's other books (including Liar's Poker which is also about his time on Wall Street) are available as part of the Amazon Prime Kindle Library deal, so I will probably check out more of his stuff.
I've read a number of Michael Lewis's books. What you've identified here is basically his shtick - he finds a person or group of people who interest him and then lionizes them. You can see this will Billy Beane in Moneyball, with the Tuohys in The Blind Side and James Clark in the New New Thing. I had the same reaction you did with the Big Short guys when I read about the Tuohys exploiting every possible loophole to get Michael Oher into college after he failed a bunch of classes. I still recommend Liar's Poker, Moneyball and Flash Boys. Flash Boys in particular is excellent for exposing why short term speculation is basically rigged in favor of well positioned institutional investors.

The Puppy Bowl posted:

It gets talked up a lot in the US pol thread, but for those who don't know Nixonland is amazing. It's a history that explores Late 50s to early 70s US society with an emphasis on the politics that surround Richard Milhouse Nixon. Huge book, near 900 pages but about as engrossing and informative as such a text could be. For anyone as ignorant as I going into it the past is prologue effect of these events on the modern era are tremendously illuminating.
I read and enjoyed Nixonland. Anyone who is interested in American politics should read this as a lot of the strategies that Nixon employs (particularly the way conservatives recruit white religious voters and attack leftists) is still 100% relevant today. The same author has written a couple other American politics books (Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus and The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan) and I'm getting to them. In particular I want to read the Fall of Nixon book because Nixonland didn't really get into his investigation that much, it ended just as it was clear that things were heating against him.

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The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > So what Non-Fiction have you read?