Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 On June 7, 2008, George Herbert Walker, a 39-year-old second cousin of then President George W. Bush, and head of Lehman's Investment Management division, was celebrating his marriage to Nancy Dorn, a 31-year-old hedge fund analyst from Texas. The couple had exchanged their vows at New York's City Hall a few weeks earlier. #2 The party was held to celebrate the wedding of George Walker and Nancy Dorn. It was clear that most of the executives at the party were stressed about the company's financial situation. #3 Lehman was founded in 1850 by three cotton trader brothers. The firm expanded after World War II, and under the reign of Bobbie Lehman, who had a Rolodex bursting with names like Whitney, Harriman, and most of the rest of New York's ruling class, it became the gentleman's banking house. #4 After Lehman, the reputation of the firm was still intact. The partners were all rich. In 2007, Fuld was named CEO of the Year by Institutional Investor magazine in the Brokers and Asset Managers category.

The inside story of what really happened at Lehman Brothers and why it failed In The Devil's Casino: Friendship, Betrayal, and the High Stakes Games Played Inside Lehman Brothers, investigative writer and Vanity Fair contributing editor Vicky Ward takes readers inside Lehman's highly charged offices. What Ward uncovers is a much bigger story than Lehman losing at the risky game of collateralized debt obligations, swaps, and leverage. A can't put it down page turner that opens the world of Wall Street to view unlike any book since Bonfire of the Vanities, except that The Devil's Casino isn't fiction. Details what went on behind-the-scenes the weekend Lehman Brothers failed, as well as inside Lehman during the twenty years preceding it Describes the feudal culture that proved both Lehman's strength and its Achilles' heel Written by Vicky Ward, one of today's most connected business and finance writers On Wall Street, Lehman Brothers was cheekily known as "the cat with nine lives." But as The Devil's Casino documents, this cat pushed its luck too far and died?the victim of men and women blinded by arrogance.

Inside the world of the real Great Gatsby of New York real estate Harry Macklowe is one of the most notorious wheelers and dealers of the real estate world, and Liar's Ball is the story of the gamblers and thieves who populate his world. Watch as Harry makes the gutsy bid for midtown Manhattan's famous GM building and put almost no money down, landing the billion-dollar transaction that made him the poster child for New York's real estate royalty. Listen in on the secret conversations, back-door deals, and blackmail that put Macklowe and his cronies on top—and set them up for an enormous fall. Vanity Fair contributing editor Vicky Ward skillfully paints the often scandalous picture of the giants who owned the New York skyline until their empires came crumbling down in the 2008 financial crisis. Based on more than 200 interviews with real estate moguls like Donald Trump, William Zeckendorf, Mort Zuckerman, and David Simon, Liar's Ball is the never-before-told story of the egomaniacal elites of New York City. Read about: The epic rise and fall of one of the richest American real estate barons Outlandish greed and cravings for power, attention, and love Relationships built and destroyed by vanity and gossip The bursting of the real estate bubble and its aftermath This is no fiction—this is a real life tale of extravagance, ambition, and power. Harry Macklowe ruthlessly clawed his way to the top with the help of his loyal followers, each grubbing for a piece of the real estate pie. Liar's Ball reveals their secrets and tells the tale of business as usual for this group—lying, backstabbing, and moving in for the kill when things look patchy. From the bestselling author of The Devil's Casino comes an expos??? on the real estate elite that you'll hardly believe.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The first explosive book about Javanka and their infamous rise to power Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are the self-styled Prince and Princess of America. Their swift, gilded rise to extraordinary power in Donald Trump’s White House is unprecedented and dangerous. In Kushner, Inc., investigative journalist Vicky Ward digs beneath the myth the couple has created, depicting themselves as the voices of reason in an otherwise crazy presidency, and reveals that Jared and Ivanka are not just the President’s chief enablers: they, like him, appear disdainful of rules, of laws, and of ethics. They are entitled inheritors of the worst kind; their combination of ignorance, arrogance, and an insatiable lust for power has caused havoc all over the world, and may threaten the democracy of the United States. Ward follows their trajectory from New Jersey and New York City to the White House, where the couple’s many forays into policy-making and national security have mocked long-standing U.S. policy and protocol. They have pursued an agenda that could increase their wealth while their actions have mostly gone unchecked. In Kushner, Inc., Ward holds Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump accountable: she unveils the couple’s self-serving transactional motivations and how those have propelled them into the highest levels of the US government where no one, the President included, has been able to stop them.

Perhaps the most peculiar feature of a financial bubble – one that Charles Kindleberger's classic work Manias, Panics and Crashes draws particular attention to – is the inability of those trapped inside it to grasp the seriousness of their predicament. They know in principle that bubbles exist, and they know that the financial crashes that result from them are capable of destroying individuals' wealth and entire economies. Yet whenever and wherever a bubble begins to form, we're told that this time things are different, that there are sound reasons to continue to invest and to presume that prices will continue to rise steadily forever. Kindleberger's achievement is to use the critical thinking skill of evaluation to examine this strange mindset and the arguments advanced in support of it. He harshly judges the acceptability of the reasons used to create such arguments, and highlights the issues of relevance and adequacy that give us every reason to doubt them. Kindleberger also uses his powers of reasoning to effect an unusual achievement – writing a work soundly rooted in economics that nonetheless engages and convinces a non-specialist audience of the correctness of his arguments.

The inside story of what really happened at Lehman Brothers and why it failed In The Devil's Casino: Friendship, Betrayal, and the High Stakes Games Played Inside Lehman Brothers, investigative writer and Vanity Fair contributing editor Vicky Ward takes readers inside Lehman's highly charged offices. What Ward uncovers is a much bigger story than Lehman losing at the risky game of collateralized debt obligations, swaps, and leverage. A can't put it down page turner that opens the world of Wall Street to view unlike any book since Bonfire of the Vanities, except that The Devil's Casino isn't fiction. Details what went on behind-the-scenes the weekend Lehman Brothers failed, as well as inside Lehman during the twenty years preceding it Describes the feudal culture that proved both Lehman's strength and its Achilles' heel Written by Vicky Ward, one of today's most connected business and finance writers On Wall Street, Lehman Brothers was cheekily known as "the cat with nine lives." But as The Devil's Casino documents, this cat pushed its luck too far and died?the victim of men and women blinded by arrogance.

Don’t miss the latest Natchez Burning novel, SOUTHERN MAN Sometimes the price of justice is a good man’s soul. The #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Natchez Burning trilogy returns with an electrifying tale of friendship, betrayal, and shattering secrets that threaten to destroy a small Mississippi town. “An ambitious stand-alone thriller that is both an absorbing crime story and an in-depth exploration of grief, betrayal and corruption… Iles’s latest calls to mind the late, great Southern novelist Pat Conroy. Like Conroy, Iles writes with passion, intensity and absolute commitment.” — Washington Post When Marshall McEwan left his Mississippi hometown at eighteen, he vowed never to return. The trauma that drove him away spurred him to become one of the most successful journalists in Washington, DC. But as the ascendancy of a chaotic administration lifts him from print fame to television stardom, Marshall discovers that his father is terminally ill, and he must return home to face the unfinished business of his past. On arrival, he finds Bienville, Mississippi very much changed. His family’s 150-year-old newspaper is failing; and Jet Talal, the love of his youth, has married into the family of Max Matheson, one of a dozen powerful patriarchs who rule the town through the exclusive Bienville Poker Club. To Marshall’s surprise, the Poker Club has taken a town on the brink of extinction and offered it salvation, in the form of a billion-dollar Chinese paper mill. But on the verge of the deal being consummated, two murders rock Bienville to its core, threatening far more than the city’s economic future. An experienced journalist, Marshall has seen firsthand how the corrosive power of money and politics can sabotage investigations. Joining forces with his former lover—who through her husband has access to the secrets of the Poker Club—Marshall begins digging for the truth behind those murders. But he and Jet soon discover that the soil of Mississippi is a minefield where explosive secrets can destroy far more than injustice. The South is a land where everyone hides truths: of blood and children, of love and shame, of hate and murder—of damnation and redemption. The Poker Club’s secret reaches all the way to Washington, D.C., and could shake the foundations of the U.S. Senate. But by the time Marshall grasps the long-buried truth about his own history, he would give almost anything not to have to face it.