If you didn't think the world was a scary place already - read this book.
Having already taken us inside the financial meltdown of the American system in The Big Short (go read if you haven't, ideally before this), Lewis now takes us on a trip around the globe. Or what's left of it.
Starting in Iceland, Lewis - using all his skills as an engaging and yet informative writer - takes us through the various stages of the global financial implosion, drawing parallels between inherent national characteristics (the Icelandic male likes taking risks, be it with fishing or finance) and the mess created there-in.
From Greece (no one thinks paying taxes is their job) to Ireland (where no one thought to count how many people actually needed a house), the cards fall as certainly as the sun sets on a debt-ridden bank.
And then there's Germany, where a blind faith in the rules caused problems that SHOULDN'T have existed.
Finally, Lewis takes us home to what is left of his America - where a militant approach to pension rights and salaries is slowly bankrupting the West Coast, one city at a time.
Throughout Boomerang, the greed and stupidity of man is at once anger-inducing and to be pitied. Lewis shows us that, in some ways, what is entirely our fault is in some ways not our fault.
Only it is.
A book that both inspires and enrages, Boomerang should be made essential reading for the next few generations.
I'd suggest picking up a copy in a library, but who's got one of those these days?

Not the best of Michael Lewis work on the stock market, as it buys into some common fallacies about how the global crises rebounds in the US, but all told it was a well done retrospective of how each country responded to the massive flow of currency in (and how Germany facilitated those flows and now tries to avoid culpability).

Meh. Interesting premise about the global economy and the recent downturn, but nothing terribly startling (other than the amounts of money gained and lost) about the facts brought up. It was more a brief economic history of the last 8 years than anything else. There were some interesting facts about the roles Ireland, Iceland and Greece have played in the economic world. Overall, an ok book to breeze through, but not a must-read by any means.

The mark of an expert storyteller, in my mind, is the ability to manufacture interest in a topic that would inspire slumber otherwise. Michael Lewis, at least for me, never fails to do this when he write about the financial markets. In this sense, Boomerang falls right in line with his other books on the subject, Liar's Poker and The Big Short (both of which I would also recommend highly). What I enjoyed about this book is the connection Lewis makes to the socio-political cultures of the countries he's covering (Iceland, Greece, Ireland, Germany, and the US via California). Boomerang drives home the point that the woes of our financial markets and the political culture that enables their knavery stems from the very human desire to pursue short-term gains in ignorance of long-term consequences. This book, refreshingly, frustrates any attempts at fingerpointing or blameshifting. The excellent journalism of Lewis in this book is a mirror. What it reflect back is chilling, but that only means Lewis has done his job.

A look at financial crises in Iceland, Ireland, Greece, Germany and California. Definitely hair-raising but also a little superficial.

Compelling, stark reading and bound to change your opinion of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Not quite as good as The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine though.

Dammit! Michael Lewis could write about the insurance market for coin-operated Japanese ceiling fans and I would just sit rapt and wide-eyed... What a sucker!

Michael Lewis is a great writer but this felt a little undercooked, mostly because, as he says in the preface, it’s publication stemmed from research for another book. Still, it was a engaging and informative as I’ve now come to expect from him.

Joan Burton and Arnold Schwarzenagger are both interviewed in this book...if you aren't already trying to acquire a copy already after hearing that unique selling point, it's also got interviews with a Texan Fund Manager who put all his money in Iceland because he used to put all his armies there playing Risk then built a fort outside Dallas with the money, an anthropologist who explains the role of scatology in the German Psyche, a casual chat after strolling into the Icelandic Prime Minister's office and a hike to a remote Greek Monastery which somehow was at the nexus of the global financial crisis.

Even though he seems to have seen it all in the financial world, his mind is still boggled by the scale of the financial crisis in Ireland, but his 50 pages on the subject are worth as much as whole shelf of books by David McWilliams and Shane Ross.

Not nearly as gripping as Liar's Poker. The narrative doesn't dig as deep, either, as the book isn't one flowing story but rather five separate ones. The topics can be best summarized as Kyle Bass, Greece, Ireland, Germany, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The themes are all intertwined and amusing references, particularly to Greece, are frequent later in the book. It's a great read if you are as infatuated with Michael Lewis as I am. I wish I had known that it is considered to be a follow-up to The Big Short, but that's next anyway. This can easily be read in an afternoon. I strongly recommend Liar's Poker as the first book if you are trying to get into Lewis' writing.