The #1 New York Times bestselling account of how the U.S. economy was driven over the cliff. Hear the original story that was turned into an Oscar-winning film directly from the author, Michael Lewis, for the very first time.

When the crash of the U.S. stock market became public knowledge in the fall of 2008, it was already old news. The real crash had taken place silently over the previous year, in obscure financial markets where the SEC doesn’t bother to look: the bond and real estate derivative markets where geeks invent impenetrable securities to profit from the misery of lower- and middle-class Americans who can’t pay their debts. The smart people who understood what was actually happening were paralyzed by hope and fear; in any case, they weren’t talking.

Newly narrated by the author himself, Michael Lewis creates a fresh, character-driven narrative brimming with indignation and dark humor, a fitting sequel to his #1 bestseller Liar's Poker. In The Big Short, he asks: Who saw the real estate market for the black hole it would become, and eventually made billions of dollars from that perception? And what qualities of character made those few persist when their peers and colleagues dismissed them as Chicken Littles? Out of this handful of unlikely―really unlikely―heroes, Lewis fashions a story as compelling and unusual as any of his earlier bestsellers, proving yet again that he is the finest and funniest chronicler of our times.