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REVIEWS AND COMMENTS
ORIGINS OF THE CRASH
"A wide-ranging examination of the stock-market boom of the 1990s and its resounding crash... Are there lessons to be drawn? Yes, many." - Kirkus Reviews (starred)
"Someday, students of American business history may tear open Origins of the Crash... to learn why the last decade's bull market came to an ugly end...An intelligent look at what ails America's corporations... Mr. Lowenstein is at the top of his own game." - Alison Leigh Cowan, The New York Times
"A lively and readable account of the last thirty years on Wall Street... Fresh and interesting... authoritative as well as informative. Recommended."
- Susan Hurst, Library Journal
"Lowenstein carefully picks through the threads of the 1980s to reveal the ones that connect to the excesses of the 1990s... the result is an original explanation of financial events that uses familiar ingredients to bake a novel cake... Lowenstein has staked out some solid ground, at once iconoclastic and conservative, and fortified it well. He has set a high standard for anyone who disagrees." - Aaron Brown, GARP Risk Review
"The spellbinding story of the bubble... the author of Buffett and When Genius Failed vividly explains the rise and fall of the 1990s stock market in plain, eay to understand language... This fascinating analysis may reveal more about the future than Wall Street would like to admit." - Stephanie Swilley, BookPage
"In Origins of the Crahs Lowenstein steps behind the numbers to examine the culture that led to the creation and bursting of the stock market bubble at the turn of the millenium...Lowenstein tells the story of the bubble with authority, force, and just the right amount of outrage. It is a sobering tale."
- John P. Mello, The Boston Globe
"Origins of the Crach by former Wall Street Journal reporter Roger Lowenstein masterfully dissects the late- 1990s stock boom and how it came to be... A crucial account of an era of excess and folly... will only seem fresher with time" - Marcia Vickers, Business Week
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Well-known financial journalist Lowenstein (Buffett ; When Genius Failed ) sets out to explain the stock market crash of 2000 and the ensuing corporate scandals. The ingredients are familiar: executive overcompensation and stock options, irrationally exuberant shareholders, friendly auditors, short-term focus by financial professionals and overemphasis on shareholder value. The author puts his unique stamp on these factors by juxtaposing them so brilliantly that the 20-year history that inflated the bubble seems not just understandable, but inevitable. The story is traced from the doldrums of the 1970s through the raiders and junk bonds of the 1980s to the financial brave new world of the 1990s. In self-conscious parallel to John Kenneth Galbraith's The Great Crash , Lowenstein explains that it is the boom that needs to be explained; the crash is simply the natural consequence. Lowenstein's low-key ease with the most complex financial reporting makes this book both accurate and easy to read, just as his earlier Buffett revealed a fascinating character where other writers saw only dullness, and his Where Genius Failed was a very comprehensible account of the 1998 Long-Term Capital Management blowup. (Jan.)