Listen free for 30 days
-
The Big Short
- Inside the Doomsday Machine
- Narrated by: Jesse Boggs, Michael Lewis
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Categories: Biographies & Memoirs, Professionals & Academics
People who bought this also bought...
-
Liar's Poker
- Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street
- By: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Michael Lewis
- Length: 3 hrs
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It was wonderful to be young and working on Wall Street in the 1980s - never had so many 24-year-olds made so much money in so little time. In this shrewd and wickedly funny audiobook, Michael Lewis describes an astonishing era and his own rake's progress through a powerful investment bank.
-
-
Don't buy abridged books
- By Judy Corstjens on 14-03-16
-
Flash Boys
- By: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Dylan Baker
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Michael Lewis, the Master of the Big Story, is back with Flash Boys. If you thought Wall Street was about alpha males standing in trading pits hollering at each other, think again. That world is dead. Now, the world's money is traded by computer code, inside black boxes in heavily guarded buildings. Even the experts entrusted with your cash don't know what's happening to it. And the very few who do aren't about to tell - because they're making a killing.
-
-
I can't praise this book highly enough...
- By Judy Corstjens on 27-04-14
-
Boomerang
- The Meltdown Tour
- By: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Dylan Baker
- Length: 7 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Having made the U.S. financial crisis comprehensible for us all in The Big Short, Michael Lewis realised that he hadn't begun to get grips with the full story. How exactly had it come to hit the rest of the world in the face too? Just how broke are we really? Boomerang is a tragi-comic romp across Europe, in which Lewis gives full vent to his storytelling genius.
-
-
Good stories, lazy analysis
- By A. Groves on 08-04-17
-
Moneyball
- The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
- By: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Moneyball is a quest for something as elusive as the Holy Grail, something that money apparently can't buy: the secret of success in baseball. The logical places to look would be the giant offices of major league teams and the dugouts. But the real jackpot is a cache of numbers collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors.
-
-
Interesting book, overdramatic reader
- By Kenny on 02-08-14
-
The Greatest Trade Ever
- How One Man Bet Against the Markets and Made $20 Billion
- By: Gregory Zuckerman
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
John Paulson, a softly spoken hedge-fund manager who still took the bus to work, seemed unlikely to stake his career on one big gamble. But he did - and The Greatest Trade Ever is the story of how he realised that the sub-prime housing bubble was going to burst, making $15 billion for his fund and more than $4 billion for himself in a single year. It's a tale of folly and wizardry, individual brilliance versus institutional stupidity.
-
-
A fascinating read
- By Brian B. on 08-04-21
-
The Smartest Guys in the Room
- The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron
- By: Bethany McLean, Peter Elkind
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 20 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What went wrong with American business at the end of the 20th century? Until the spring of 2001, Enron epitomised the triumph of the New Economy. Feared by rivals, worshipped by investors, Enron seemingly could do no wrong. Its profits rose every year; its stock price surged ever upward; its leaders were hailed as visionaries. Then a young Fortune writer, Bethany McLean, wrote an article posing a simple question - how, exactly, does Enron make its money?
-
-
Great Listen!
- By Anonymous User on 18-04-21
-
Liar's Poker
- Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street
- By: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Michael Lewis
- Length: 3 hrs
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It was wonderful to be young and working on Wall Street in the 1980s - never had so many 24-year-olds made so much money in so little time. In this shrewd and wickedly funny audiobook, Michael Lewis describes an astonishing era and his own rake's progress through a powerful investment bank.
-
-
Don't buy abridged books
- By Judy Corstjens on 14-03-16
-
Flash Boys
- By: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Dylan Baker
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Michael Lewis, the Master of the Big Story, is back with Flash Boys. If you thought Wall Street was about alpha males standing in trading pits hollering at each other, think again. That world is dead. Now, the world's money is traded by computer code, inside black boxes in heavily guarded buildings. Even the experts entrusted with your cash don't know what's happening to it. And the very few who do aren't about to tell - because they're making a killing.
-
-
I can't praise this book highly enough...
- By Judy Corstjens on 27-04-14
-
Boomerang
- The Meltdown Tour
- By: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Dylan Baker
- Length: 7 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Having made the U.S. financial crisis comprehensible for us all in The Big Short, Michael Lewis realised that he hadn't begun to get grips with the full story. How exactly had it come to hit the rest of the world in the face too? Just how broke are we really? Boomerang is a tragi-comic romp across Europe, in which Lewis gives full vent to his storytelling genius.
-
-
Good stories, lazy analysis
- By A. Groves on 08-04-17
-
Moneyball
- The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
- By: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Moneyball is a quest for something as elusive as the Holy Grail, something that money apparently can't buy: the secret of success in baseball. The logical places to look would be the giant offices of major league teams and the dugouts. But the real jackpot is a cache of numbers collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors.
-
-
Interesting book, overdramatic reader
- By Kenny on 02-08-14
-
The Greatest Trade Ever
- How One Man Bet Against the Markets and Made $20 Billion
- By: Gregory Zuckerman
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
John Paulson, a softly spoken hedge-fund manager who still took the bus to work, seemed unlikely to stake his career on one big gamble. But he did - and The Greatest Trade Ever is the story of how he realised that the sub-prime housing bubble was going to burst, making $15 billion for his fund and more than $4 billion for himself in a single year. It's a tale of folly and wizardry, individual brilliance versus institutional stupidity.
-
-
A fascinating read
- By Brian B. on 08-04-21
-
The Smartest Guys in the Room
- The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron
- By: Bethany McLean, Peter Elkind
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 20 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What went wrong with American business at the end of the 20th century? Until the spring of 2001, Enron epitomised the triumph of the New Economy. Feared by rivals, worshipped by investors, Enron seemingly could do no wrong. Its profits rose every year; its stock price surged ever upward; its leaders were hailed as visionaries. Then a young Fortune writer, Bethany McLean, wrote an article posing a simple question - how, exactly, does Enron make its money?
-
-
Great Listen!
- By Anonymous User on 18-04-21
-
The Undoing Project
- A Friendship That Changed the World
- By: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky met in war-torn 1960s Israel. Both were gifted young psychology professors: Kahneman a rootless son of Holocaust survivors who saw the world as a problem to be solved, Tversky a voluble, instinctual blur of energy. In this breathtaking new audiobook, Michael Lewis tells the extraordinary story of a relationship that became a shared mind: one which created the field of behavioural economics, revolutionising everything from Big Data to medicine.
-
-
Great writer finds a great topic
- By Judy Corstjens on 24-12-16
-
The Money Culture
- By: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Alexander Cendese
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The 1980s was the most outrageous and turbulent era in the financial market since the crash of ’29, not only on Wall Street but around the world. Michael Lewis, as a trainee at Salomon Brothers in New York and as an investment banker and later financial journalist, was uniquely positioned to chronicle the ambition and folly that fueled the decade. In these trenchant, often hilarious true tales we meet the colorful movers and shakers who commanded the headlines and rewrote the rules.
-
-
need to get finance and banking
- By m on 23-11-18
-
The Blind Side
- Evolution of a Game
- By: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 11 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When we first meet the young man at the center of this extraordinary and moving story, he is one of 13 children by a mother addicted to crack; he does not know his real name, his father, his birthday, or any of the things a child might learn in school. And he has no serious experience playing organized football.
-
-
Even better than the film.
- By Maudesith on 24-03-17
-
The Fifth Risk
- Undoing Democracy
- By: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 5 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The morning after Trump was elected president, the people who ran the US Department of Energy - an agency that deals with some of the most powerful risks facing humanity - waited to welcome the incoming administration's transition team. Nobody appeared. Across the US government, the same thing happened: nothing. People don't notice when stuff goes right. That is the stuff government does. It manages everything that underpins our lives from funding free school meals, to policing rogue nuclear activity, to predicting extreme weather events.
-
-
A love letter to undemocratic institutions
- By Sebastian D'Anconia on 31-12-18
-
Den of Thieves
- By: James B. Stewart
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 19 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pulitzer Prize winner James B. Stewart shows for the first time how four of the biggest names on Wall Street - Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, Martin Siegel, and Dennis Levine - created the greatest insider-trading ring in financial history and almost walked away with billions - until a team of downtrodden detectives triumphed over some of America's most expensive lawyers to bring this powerful quartet to justice.
-
-
Long and Dry, but interesting
- By BDM on 11-11-14
-
Flash Crash
- A Trading Savant, a Global Manhunt and the Most Mysterious Market Crash in History
- By: Liam Vaughan
- Narrated by: Liam Vaughan
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On May 6, 2010, financial markets around the world tumbled simultaneously and without warning. In the span of five minutes, a trillion dollars of valuation was lost. The Flash Crash, as it became known, represented the fastest drop in market history. When share values rebounded less than half an hour later, experts around the globe were left perplexed. What had they just witnessed? Navinder Singh Sarao hardly seemed like a man who would shake the world's financial markets to their core.
-
-
my word just been through this book twice
- By Arvinder singh on 16-05-20
-
The Man Who Solved the Market
- By: Gregory Zuckerman
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jim Simons is the greatest moneymaker in modern financial history. His record bests those of legendary investors, including Warren Buffett, George Soros and Ray Dalio. Yet Simons and his strategies are shrouded in mystery. The financial industry has long craved a look inside Simons's secretive hedge fund, Renaissance Technologies and veteran Wall Street Journal reporter Gregory Zuckerman delivers the goods.
-
-
Interesting man and colleagues, but boring book
- By DRW on 18-02-20
-
The Spider Network
- The Wild Story of a Maths Genius, a Gang of Backstabbing Bankers, and One of the Greatest Scams in Financial History
- By: David Enrich
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 15 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2006 an oddball group of bankers, traders and brokers from some of the largest financial institutions made a startling realization: Libor - the London interbank offered rate, which determines the interest rates on trillions in loans worldwide - was set daily by a group of easily manipulated administrators, and they could reap huge profits by nudging it fractions of a percent to suit their trading portfolios. This group generated incredible riches - until it all unraveled in spectacularly vicious, backstabbing fashion.
-
-
dreary novel in a romantic style
- By Dubai_Paul on 02-05-17
-
The Buy Side
- A Wall Street Trader's Tale of Spectacular Excess
- By: Turney Duff
- Narrated by: Turney Duff
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A remarkable writing debut, filled with indelible moments, The Buy Side shows as no book ever has the rewards – and dizzying temptations – of making a living on the Street.
-
-
Fascinating
- By Amazon Customer on 21-07-18
-
A Man for All Markets
- From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market
- By: Edward O. Thorp, Nassim Nicholas Taleb - foreword
- Narrated by: Edward O. Thorp
- Length: 16 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The incredible true story of the card-counting mathematics professor who taught the world how to beat the dealer and, as the first of the great quantitative investors, ushered in a revolution on Wall Street.
-
-
One of the best investing books out there
- By Ronan Patrick on 14-08-20
-
Billion Dollar Loser
- The Epic Rise and Fall of WeWork
- By: Reeves Wiedeman
- Narrated by: Will Collyer
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Christened a potential saviour of Silicon Valley's start-up culture, Adam Neumann was set to take WeWork, his office-share company disrupting the commercial real estate market, public, cash out on the company's $47 billion valuation, and break the string of major start-ups unable to deliver to shareholders. But as employees knew, and investors soon found out, WeWork's capital was built on promises that the company was more than a real estate purveyor, that in fact it was a transformational technology company.
-
-
Ultimately disappointing.
- By Alonzo on 04-02-21
-
Dark Towers
- Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction
- By: David Enrich
- Narrated by: BJ Harrison
- Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Dark Towers, award-winning journalist David Enrich reveals the truth about Deutsche Bank and its epic path of devastation. Tracing the bank’s history back to its propping up of a default-prone American developer in the 1880s, helping the Nazis build Auschwitz, and wooing Eastern Bloc authoritarians, he shows how in the 1990s, via a succession of hard-charging executives, Deutsche made a fateful decision to pursue Wall Street riches, often at the expense of ethics and the law.
-
-
Non fiction that reads like a thriller!
- By davidb55 on 18-11-20
Summary
The long-awaited follow-up to the global best-seller Liar's Poker, The Big Short tells a story of spectacular, epic folly.
It has taken the world's greatest financial meltdown to bring Michael Lewis back to the subject that made him famous. His international best seller Liar's Poker exposed the greed and carnage of the City and Wall Street in the 1980s; he wrote it as a cautionary tale, but people seem to have read it as a how-to guide. Now, he wants to settle accounts.
In this visceral tour to the heart of the money-making machine, Michael Lewis traces the origins of the crisis and introduces us to a new cast of compulsively fascinating characters. We meet the people who saw it coming, the people who were asleep at the wheel, and others who were actively driving us all off the cliff. Where did it all start? How could we have all been so deluded for quite so long? Did it really have to be this way? And who the hell can we blame? Michael Lewis has the answers.
No one is better qualified to reveal the dark truths about how our world really works. No one else could make it such an enjoyable ride along the way.
This edition includes a prologue read by the author, plus an exclusive author interview.
Critic reviews
More from the same
What listeners say about The Big Short
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- M. Griffiths
- 19-02-17
Staggering
Great and awful story told in an engaging way through the eyes of a variety of players. I defy anybody to listen to this without having a visceral reaction.
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- Olivier
- 23-01-13
Sub-Primes for Dummies
Anyone who wants to understand the roots of the sub-prime crisis, which has plunged the world in recession for the past 5 years, should definitely get this book. Michael Lewis explains in easily comprehensible terms the concepts and reasons behind the splitting of mortgage loans into various floors and how this dissociation of the loans from the assets led to ever more abstract constructions which finally sent the world into chaos in the summer of 2008. A must read if you want to know why, and how, we got into the mess we are in nowadays.
7 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- christina
- 17-08-11
Just enough technical detail and a good story
I've worked a lot in financial regulation so I understood a lot about the events described already, but I still learned a few things from this. All the technical details are well explained and I think people without a financial background could understand a lot of it as well.
As for the story, it's well done. If I have a criticism, it's that it's a bit too black and white - Lewis's world is populated by two types of people - one group who are smart, hardworking and honest, and another who are stupid, shady and just out to make a quick buck. But I guess he exaggerated the characters a bit to make the story more engaging. And engaging it is. Would recommend to anyone interested in understanding what caused the crisis but not wanting to get bogged down in technical analyses
7 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- Joe
- 16-10-11
Complex but enjoyable
If you can get your head around complex wall street 'financial speak' such as synthetic CDO's and credit default swaps then this book is a revelation. Or at least it was for me; I thought the banks had been irresponsible now I know they are downright corrupt. The great irony is that they made these complex financial models to hide the risk but the models became so complex that they didn't understand them themselves.
10 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Wras
- 10-02-15
A thriller that is still evolving into a nigthmare
What happens when you add complexity to an equation, then add more complexity and more and more and more, not knowing what the answer will be?
What happens when your long term is three month but your construct is measured in years?
What happens when men plan only for a myopic self serving individualistic benefit, not thinking for a moment about the larger society?
What happens when you stop thinking of other human beings as real but just streams of future income, expendable, usable, inconsequential?
What happens when you have so much money; you no longer understand the reality of others, when thirty million dollars is not enough to enter a game. when a hundred million only lets you pick at the table; when a billion is just a start?
What happens when the regulators all want to be the regulated because that is where the real money is?
What happens when you and your children pay for the insanity this questions propose?
I have picked behind the curtain, and what I saw was madness, mountains of madness.
The failures of our economies are the failures of our morality and the rot is so deep in our humanity, we need to have a radical removal of it virulence; or it will metastasise in all our values, and institutions.
Must read a thriller that is still evolving into a nightmare.
13 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- Chris Downing
- 22-04-10
What went wrong, in a way you'll understand.
The politicians blamed the bankers, the bankers blamed the poor, the business people blamed everyone and we didn't know who to blame. At last a book that tells what happened and where it all went wrong, without the writer needing to play a political or buisness position.
Be warned though, after listening to this you'll find it mighty hard to accept the bilge that passes for business, political and accepted truths about what is the World's biggest financial disaster. Do yourself a favour and wise up to what's been going on. Start taking action to avoid getting sucked in to all this. This story won't be completely played out for another ten years - so it's going to influence you, your wealth and income and your well being. Read the book and get ready.
9 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- Judy Corstjens
- 23-06-11
Terrific
A dramatic story that leaves a normal person feeling very angry. The bad guys waltz off with millions and the good guys aren't exactly heroes either. Some details are a little hard to grasp for a layperson, but then again 99% of Wall Street insiders didn't quite understand the Ponzi scheme they were rolled up in either. An amazing tale of our times, well-told by an able story-teller.
8 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Philip A.
- 26-08-16
Dense financial detail made accessible
What did you like best about this story?
Explores complex minutae but in a way that illustrates the big picture about the financial industry as a whole
What does Michael Lewis and Jesse Boggs bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?
I think I might have bogged down in the detail reading it myself
Any additional comments?
Anyone who wants to know how the financial crisis happened would find this very interesting
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Fiona
- 03-08-16
fascinating
Fascinating account of the financial crisis if 2008, sub prime mortgage bonds, synthetic CDOs, a real eye opener.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Srjane
- 25-07-16
If only I understood it all
Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
I would recommend it to a historian or financial investor - but my dearest friends and family? No. I struggled to understand the terminology (even though it was fully explained in the book) and when things start going downhill - well I was totally lost.
What did you like best about this story?
I loved the insights into the financial markets and the characters that pervade that scene. It was great to see how the institutions look down on all us plebs and rip off everyone on such a grand scale. Scary
What does Michael Lewis and Jesse Boggs bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?
Loads of information and insights on how stock market works and also the world within the world and the influence at every level in society.
Did The Big Short inspire you to do anything?
It inspired me to see the film to see if it made more sense than the book. I got lost halfway through. The film sorted out the basics of the book but it also glossed over a lot that I still needed explaining.
Any additional comments?
I think you need an interest in stock markets and banking to really fully understand what happened here.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Chris Waterguy
- 07-05-19
Riveting
Like a blockbuster disaster movie for people who enjoy Planet Money. Fascinating characters and an epic scope.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Tony
- 25-07-18
This books proves fact is better than fiction
You dont have to understand or love money to love this rollicking true life drama. i didnt want it to end and when it did i immediately bought Liars Poker. Michael Lewis is as smart as the guys that bet short.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Shreek
- 22-07-18
The best financial reporting ever!
This was my first Michael Lewis book and I am new to the world of finance. Michael has an innate ability to explain complex terms in a wonderful story format. I highly recommend this book to anyone remotely interested in knowing the financial crisis of 2007 and finance world in general
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Anonymous User
- 20-09-17
Flabbergasted
Narration is good. Story is interesting and shocking. Provides an insight into financial crisis which is a little sickening. You will not be a fan of wall street after this.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Luke
- 09-09-16
Fascinating and boring
This story is incredible. I watched the film and thoroughly enjoyed the story, and so I wanted to get into more of the detail. However, it's a seriously detailed read and not so easy to follow the technical aspects. But enjoyable none the less -- especially having the characters from the film in my imagination.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- SAURABH ARVIND DAYAMA
- 16-03-16
Awesome book, bugs in the app
This is a great book. however, the app did not show the chapters correctly. I found the app a bit annoying.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Amazon Customer
- 23-02-16
Enjoyable story of disaster
A fascinating true story of the subprime crisis and Wall Street malfeasance. Leaves you with a distaste for what the US government did in bailing out the banks. They should have been allowed to fail with the cash and guarantees going to the savers instead of the speculators.