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Summary: A must read for anyone who has ever invested in the market
Review: James Stewart's terrific book clearly shows that greed ruled the '80s. For the likes of Boesky, Levine, and Milken, no amount of money was ever enough
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Summary: The second tape's B-Side jumps some lines...
Review: A quite good adaptation of the book. The narrator is a good reader so that non-English speakers understand him. The only drawback is that the transition from Sida-A to Side-B on the second tape is wrong. I do not know how many lines or pages we miss, but ... it's a mess!
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Summary: Milken and Boesky as devils of the financial world
Review: Decently written book that reveals only one side of the Milken story. It clearly presents the government's point in the trial. It lacks some compassion towards Milken as a human being. I personally like the overall written picture of Ivan Boesky and relevant photos of him included in this book.
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Summary: biased hatchet job
Review: DEN OF THIEVES is a biased hatchet job against financial genius Michael Milken--a man who was a powerful force for good in American business and is, at most, guilty of the moral equivalent of jaywalking. For more objective accounts read Daniel Fischel's PAYBACK--THE CONSPIRACY TO DESTROY MICHAEL MILKEN and Jesse Kornbluth's HIGHLY CONFIDENT.
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Summary: Fascinating!
Review: A superlative tale, all the more so because it is true. The background look at the four main players (Levine, Boesky, Milkin, and Siegel) is what makes this book a standout.
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Summary: Wall Street's dark side in the Go-Go 80's
Review: Top notch historical perspective. The book is lengthy and detailed but the story would lose much of it's imapct if it was abridged. It covers all the major players and power brokers of the 1980's M&A craze that swept Wall Street. Very enjoyable and highly recommended
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Summary: A fun, readable account of what happened and why on Wall St.
Review: This text, like the story it tells, is protracted but highly readable. Mr. Stewart writes in an engaging, enjoyable style. He enables his readers to grasp the real drama of the events that shook Wall Street during the 1980's. We see the primary firgures in the junk bond and M&A empires who traded information and manipulated the market for amazing personal gain. We gain insight into what motivated them, what destroyed them, and how they dealt with the pressures and rewards of insider trading. The most frightening aspect of the text is the obvious implication that future financial leaders may exploit their positions as readily as the four men detailed here
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Summary: A fascinating look at a complex and amazing scandal.
Review: The 1980's were known as the "Greed Decade" but, for many, the true excesses of that greed were never fully known or are now only a distant memory. James Stewart's book, "Den of Thieves" provides a comprehensive, fascinating and readable look at the insider trading scandals of the 1980's which brought words like
arbitrageur and LBO into the mainstream and people like Boesky and Milken household names.Stewart begins by looking at the rise of some of Wall Street's highest fliers and, in many cases, providing exhaustive details of how the prevailing mantra of "greed is good" led them to orchestrate their own downfall. The audacity of many of these people is almost breathtaking, as is the wealth they accumulated. Stewart moves on to detail the process by which the government, in the form of the SEC and then-US Attorney Rudy Giuliani, brought this house of cards tumbling down. The various players in the game are portrayed with varying degrees of sympathy. However, the government authorities are not necessarily portrayed in the most flattering light and Stewart raises a number of questions about the overall handling of the investigations. One word of caution - readers should not get too bogged down in the details of the story. The insider trading scandal involved
hundreds of players and transactions and schemes that were unbelievably complex. It is almost impossible to assimilate the entire story without getting somewhat confused. Nevertheless, the book is at its most effective when you take a step back and look at the grand scheme of the insider trades, the methods by which the perpetrators were brought to justice and the punishment they suffered from their crimes. In many ways, the book was published before the story reached a final conclusion and it would be worthwhile for a revised edition to be published, updating the status of the actors involved and the fallout of the revelations which the investigations brought. Overall, this is a fascinating and well written book which raises fundamental questions about the way business was, and is, conducted and the way in which the justice system operates. I would highly recommend it as the definitive account of the insider trading scandals of the 1980s.
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Summary: Insightful Read on the "Greed" Decade
Review: The book was an excellent narrative, first off. Stewart does a fine job with the "action" part of the story. While it might be true that some of his analysis is off (see other reviews), it still gets the point across. While obviously Stewart has a pro-U.S. Attorney and SEC slant, if the book was entirely truthful (which indications say is so), then readers really have no choice but to come away with the verdict that Michael Milken, albeit a visionary in some sense and a great salesman, was really a crook who cost the taxpayers billions and unfairly ruled the junk-bond market with an iron fist. Especially interesting is Stewart's theory on how junk bonds contributed to the S&L debacle in the late '80's. All-in-all, the narrative is great, and the analysis seems to be decent. It really makes the blood boil, however, to learn how Milken especially duped the system and then got away with a too light sentence (although it actually could've been shorter had Milken had more common sense)
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Summary: i got bored and confused
Review: and i never made it past page three hundred. i like the pictures.
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