32 Books Like Liquidated

As everyone knows at this point, anything Michael Lewis writes will be enormous fun to read, while being about something really important—something he’ll make you care about even if you didn’t when you started the book.

In this case, the subject is people who bet on the direction of mortgages (and thus, house prices), and how those who bet on a huge plunge were right. This book has an amazing cast of characters, all richly drawn: some are smart, some are not so smart; some are excellent schmoozers, some can barely tolerate human interaction; some care a lot about money, some care more about being right, especially if everyone else is wrong.

Each book I've recommended cries out to be made into a movie. This one actually was.

Chicago’s famous ‘open-outcry’ trading pits were packed with hundreds of traders making deals with each other using eye contact and hand signals, or simply shouting out their bids and offers. Anthropologist Caitlin Zaloom did something quite extraordinary. She studied these pits ‘from the inside’ (as a trader’s clerk) and then went on to examine the electronic trading that was starting to replace them – herself becoming a trader. Her book represents anthropology at its most skilled and offers a fascinating glimpse of the lost world of face-to-face trading (nearly all of Chicago’s pits are now closed). 

I researched Chicago’s pits myself in the years in which they still flourished, but not in the depth that Zaloom achieved. I’m in awe of her fabulous fieldwork.

The global financial crisis that erupted in 2008 was a shocking event. Britain’s cash machines came within a few hours of stopping working, and the global banking system would have collapsed were it not for unprecedented multi-billion-dollar government bail-outs. Gillian Tett, trained as an anthropologist, became a financial journalist but kept on applying her fieldwork skills. Almost alone in her new profession, she grasped the huge risks that were developing underneath the radar and wrote about them in the Financial Times. Her book, Fool’s Gold, was one of the first books written about 2008’s giant crisis and remains one of the best. 

To my mind, Tett is the world’s top financial journalist, and I’ve always learned a great deal from her pioneering in-depth reporting.

Taking the Floor is the story of a 20-year intellectual odyssey, by Daniel Beunza, one of the world’s most insightful analysts of the financial system. He delves in-depth into the organization of a Wall Street trading room, beginning with him negotiating access to it when he was working on his PhD. He also reveals how later conversations with key people in the trading room made him rethink many of his first impressions, showing him that what he took to be a typical form of organization was actually very deliberately designed to be unusual. 

I particularly admire Beunza’s nuanced take (co-developed with the sociologist David Stark) on how traders use mathematical models. Traders are far from the naïve users of models that they are often portrayed as being, and instead often use models in a sophisticated way, not as guides to the truth of markets but as insights into what their… show more.

Greg Shotwell was a longtime worker at General Motors and activist in the United Auto Workers who was notorious among executives in both the company and union for his rank-and-file newsletter, Live Bait and Ammo. This book is a collection of articles from that newsletter, and it’s a bitingly funny and ultimately heartbreaking account of autoworkers’ losing fight to maintain the rights and living standards that had made the union famous. 

Unlike the other books on my list, this book is the story of a defeat, but it is also a portrait of the generation of working-class fighters who kept alive the radical shop-floor traditions that are an essential component of any socialist vision. This is the book that made me want to become a writer. 

Westlake is one of my favorite authors. His best-known works are his humorous John Dortmunder crime capers, but this book is a freestanding work with a brilliance all its own. Imagine an ordinary businessman sacked in corporate downsizing and desperate to land a new job…so desperate that he’ll literally kill the competition to get it.

I found it impossible to put down as I followed Burke Devore, someone not truly a “bad guy,” plan, prepare for, and carry out murder after murder. But what dazzled me most was how Westlake morphed a chilling crime spree into a grand metaphor for survival in the world of business.

In addition to sharing a ton of helpful insight into what RV life is like, this book is beautifully designed and full of colorful photos. It includes profiles of RVers, tips for starting RVing, and plenty of inspiration to hit the road. It’s a perfect coffee table book!

Bill Bratton had the original insight that crime is a city problem, not just a cop problem. In this book, he discusses how collaboration between city, state, and federal agencies is essential to reduce murder and violent felonies. How easy is it to get government agencies to cooperate? Like herding cats, you say? More like herding rabid lions and tigers. You’re dealing with bureaucrats who imbibed the subtleties of the double and triple cross with their mothers’ milk!

This is a motivational and inspiring story.

It shows that anybody can overcome difficulties with effort and perseverance. This is reminiscent of my journey to freedom. I narrated a part of my life when I lost my life and lived in very difficult situations. I always have a motto in my life: I can do it!

This is the story of a person who decided never to despair and give up in any circumstances. I overcame all the hardships and eventually became a scientist in the United States. It shows that the human spirit cannot be conquered and that anyone can overcome any problem with effort, perseverance, and hope.

Mark Douglas’ book focuses on practical tools and techniques to counter the gambling mentality that typifies speculative trading. He focuses on a more rational, math-based approach to participation in markets as a speculator. Although I was already a successful trader by the time I’d read Mark’s book, it reinforced that the tools and techniques I had developed to dampen emotionalism in the markets were sound.