New Michael Lewis Book -- The Big Short

I love reading Michael Lewis. Lewis has the uncanny ability to capture uniqueness in the characters he writes about and in the process keeps the reader totally engrossed in the quest of his real-life protagonists. It doesn't matter if we are talking about a major league baseball general manager ( Money Ball), an inner-city black high school football player trying to fit in with his adopted white southern suburban family ( The Blind Side) or an Internet mogul looking for his next billion dollar score ( The New New Thing) Lewis's subjects are fascinating to follow.

I read an excerpt last night from the new Lewis book The Big Short I think he has another winner on his hands. Lewis has focused on one Michael Bury in his latest. Bury is a guy we've never heard of until now but boy is his story interesting. Picture a total loner, a guy that by the age of 29 really could say that he had no close friends.A guy that walked away from his medical profession to start a hedge fund ( at the time he had a negative net worth of roughly $100K) What Bury did have though was the desire and interest to fastidiously study hundreds of mortgage securities in the early years of the new century. He became convinced that the housing market was ready for a major tumble and his quest became finding a way for his hedge fund to profit from what he perceived to be an upcoming financial debacle.Others such as John Paulson have been chronicled as having been big winners in the mortgage meltdown, yet Bury was really the first one to identify the opportunity and until now has largely operated off the radar screen.The hoops he had to jump through to be successful were monumental. Many of the episodes chronicled go in the, " you just can't make this up" category. I am really looking forward to the book release as I found the excerpt to be " can't put it down" stuff.