Academic

I?d almost read my fill of financial crisis books, but I?m glad that I finally got around to The Big Short in earnest.  It completely justifies all those big sales.  In addition to serving as an entirely plausible account of the whole shebang, the lens adopted ? telling the story from the perspective of a few different traders who put on a short of the housing bubble ? also offers a perspective on what, exactly,  it is that people who run money do. The protagonists of Lewis's story are marginal folks in finance (or were, at least), but it is still illuminating in a way that 

Lewis has a template.  Make your hero the outsider who achieves against the odds ? he has used it on Moneyball, The Blind Side, and now The Big Short.  In this he is surprisingly similar to David McCollugh, with a bit less of the yay America.  But sometimes templates allow you to focus on making the rest of the story accurate and interesting.  And Lewis can get away from the formula ? he basically does that in his Vanity Fair tours d?force on Greece and Ireland.

It?s an enviable life: make millions through writing, talk to any mukety-muck you like, and some you don?t, viz. the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commision, and watch your projects turn into prestigefilmed dramas.  It is a nice thing that the books and articles are well worth reading.