By Nic Lindh on Saturday, 19 August 2006
When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management is a business book that reads like a Greek tragedy, filled with the exceptional hubris of very smart and driven people who end up losing sight of their own weaknesses.
Roger Lowenstein’s writing is fast-paced and clean, with just the right amount of characterization of the main players. It could be argued that some more explanation of the complicated economic instruments used by Long-Term would be useful—unless the reader is well-versed in hedge fund lingo, some of the more esoteric instruments are difficult to understand.
When Genius Failed is well worth reading for anybody interested in how the markets work and sometimes spectacularly don’t work.
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