Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis Changed My Life

Many years ago I was a business student at the University of Southern California, specializing in Investment Finance. I had something of a natural aptitude for the nuances of the mathematical and financial models, and I found the subject matter far more practical (and frankly easier) than the physics course of study my father wished me to pursue (we'll crack that nut in another Lens for sure!)
I was about to enter my senior year (ok... my SECOND senior year... but I already told you I'd crack that nut later!) to finish up the last of my business courses. I was taking a class taught by Georgio DeSantis, a fiesty Italian fellow whose charisma and enthusiasm were infectious. One of the recommended readings for the course was the aforementioned Michael Lewis work.
Now granted... I wasn't exactly the most enthusiastic physics student... but when it came to finance, I was all over it... and when you're in Southern California in late August just before the fall semester starts there's no better place to be than hanging out poolside in the sun. It's pretty hard for me to just lie there in the sun, so I brought Mr. Lewis' fine work with me and started reading.

It didn't take long for Mr. Lewis to pull the wool from my eyes. With his many first second, and third hand accounts of his experiences while working at Salomon Brothers leading up to the 1987 market crash and the cut-throat nature of the business I was at once both pulled deeply into the pages of the book and grotesquely aware that I was not cut out for the career path for which I had so wistfully longed. Stories of his characters about 'Dash Riprock', 'Alexander', and 'The Human Piranha' made it all too clear to me that I would be ripped to pieces in a heartbeat working in that kind of environment.
No matter how much I loved finance, no matter how much I knew or how hard I studied, I could never hold up psychologically under that kind of pressure. I am reminded of how badly I would have performed every time I play poker with my friends. No poker face = No 'edge'. No Edge + Whithering Stress = No Career on Wall Street for me. I knew it then and I know it now. All those guys you hear about off-ing themselves because of Hedge Fund losses and the Bernie Madoff scam? Yea, that would have been me in the obituaries.

So needless to say I never entered a career in investment finance, which at the time of Liar's Poker was fundamentally an unethical business endeavor and it is clear that little has changed in the two plus decades since Lewis began at Salomon Brothers. If you're not prepared to play a game of Liar's Poker with your soul then Investment Banking probably isn't a good career for you either. Read Liar's Poker and Michael Lewis' follow up work The Money Culture to see what I mean.
I'll leave you with my two favorite notes from the book, which I can still recall quite well despite not having looked at the book in 15 years.
First is one of the earliest stories in the book. 'One million dollars: No tears' - literally meaning a bet in a game of Liar's Poker between two of Wall Street's most powerful men, the loser pays One million dollars with no whining about it.
The second is about 'The Human Piranha'. How does one get a nickname like that in a book anyway? Lewis describes the Human Piranha's world as one (sic) 'Full of Fornicating Inanimate Objects and People Running Around with their Faces Ripped Off'. Okay, so that anecdote probably will lose me my G-Rating for this blog but.. whatever.
If you've read this and decide to pick up a copy of Liar's Poker then great! I will have done my job in encouraging you to read a great book. It changed my life. I hope you read it and enjoy it.