Rating: 
Summary: Highly Recommended!
Review: Accomplished financial journalist Roger Lowenstein weaves a captivating tale in this history of the late 1990s market boom and subsequent bust. The story reads like a thriller, complete with powerful bad guys (played here by CEOs), innocent bystanders (ordinary investors) and hapless observers (ineffective government regulators). While it does not offer specific tips on avoiding fraud or implementing change on Wall Street - indeed, the author admits that real change in that bastion of enlightened self-interest may be impossible - this book is a valuable cautionary tale. Lowenstein traces the evolution of creative accounting practices that blossomed into blatant fraud and eventual bankruptcy, finally forcing the notoriously pro-business Bush administration into pushing for corporate governance reform. Along the way, he exposes the myths of the dot-com era and deconstructs the sham of shareholder value. He makes trenchant observations about a financial culture that allowed the ultra rich to get richer, while fully half of Americans never participated in the boom or benefited from it, although everyone paid the price of the bust. We recommend this book to anyone who lost money when the bubble burst - better luck next time.
Rating: 
Summary: Good probing of the market crash ...
Review: Am a fan of Lowenstein's books. Read Buffett (5 stars) and When Genius Failed (4.5 stars) ... so I was drawn to this book more from his past successes than a desire to read up on the crash of 2000 ...
Overall, it's a good recap of events and a good probing of the reasons, details, nuances, etc.; but I felt that it was more of a retelling of events that a person would be highly familiar with simply by having read the Wall Street Journal on a daily basis ... I didn't read much on Enron so the book's details shed good insights ... but again, if I had read most of the Enron articles from its heyday, I probably would have been familiar with most of what the author reveals in his book ...
So I give this book 4 stars ... good recap ... for someone who is highly interested in the reasons behind the crash and "did not read the WSJ on a daily basis", then this book will provide a superb backdrop to the financial fiasco that began the new millenium ...
Rating: 
Summary: A good overview that lacks new details.
Review: As a regular reader of the Wall Street Journal, I found this book to be too high-level for my liking. There is no real insight here as to what happened during the 1990's in the US financial markets, just a general rehashing of what I read in the WSJ. Given that, if you are unfamiliar with what went on this book would serve as good overview, but don't think you are going to learn anything new if you already have a familiarity with the topic.One point I did disagree with was how Lowenstein gave Clinton a pass (the scandals did occur on his watch) but seemed to pile on Bush for not being aggressive enough in cleaning them up. A valid argument can be made for the later, but giving the Clinton administration a free pass harks of bias. I also think Lowenstein fails to link the artificially high stock prices of non dot-com companies with that of dot-com companies. I am of the opinion that one reason many companies inflated their earnings, and subsequently their stock price, was to keep up with the high growth rate of the dot-coms. Why would someone buy Enron growing at 10% a year, when I can have Yahoo growing at 50% a year? To compete with that kind of grow and make their stocks more attractive (aside from enriching themselves on options) executives baked the numbers.
Rating:
Summary: Good overview, lack new details.
Review: As a regular reader of the Wall Street Journal, I found this book to be too high-level for my liking. There is no real insight here as to what happened during the 1990's in the US financial markets, just a general rehashing of what I read in the WSJ. Given that, if you are unfamiliar with what went on this book would serve as good overview, but don't think you are going to learn anything new if you already have a familiarity with the top. One point I did disagree with was how Roger gave Clinton a pass (the scandals did occur on his watch) but seemed to pile on Bush for not being aggressive enough in cleaning them up. A valid argument can be made for the later, but giving the Clinton administration a free pass harks of bias. I also think Roger fails to link the artificially high stock prices of non dot-com companies with that of dot-com companies. I am of the opinion that one reason many companies inflated their earnings, and subsequently their stock price, was to keep up with the high growth rate of the dot-coms. Why would someone buy Enron growing at 10% a year, when I can have Yahoo growing at 50% a year? To compete with that kind of grow and make their stocks more attractive (aside from enriching themselves on options) executives baked the numbers.
Rating:
Summary: Competent coverage but not a great deal more
Review: First off, disclosure: Penguin sent me a copy of this book to read & review for free based on an earlier review I wrote of one of Roger Lowenstein's books on this site. So I have a theoretical conflict of interest, though I am doing my best not to allow it to affect - positively or negatively - my view of this book. That being said it is a somewhat ironic marketing tactic for Penguin to use n this particular case (but one which I heartily encourage, by the way) since Lowenstein's main theme is the mischief arising from conflicts of interest suffered by research analysts when covering the stocks of companies to whom their firms are pitching for investment banking business. Be that as it may, I've disclosed it now, so you're warned. Origins of the Crash covers much the same ground as Frank Partnoy's Infectious Greed and John Cassidy's Dot Con. As usual, Partnoy can't resist hopping on his moral high-horse, or mentioning 10+ year old derivatives scandals that have nothing to do at all with the recent market turmoil; Cassidy is more measured but restricts himself very much to the Dot Com phenomenon, adding an interesting history of the internet and computers in finance. Lowenstein manages deals with the spinning, laddering and corporate governance scandals of the early part of this decade, but as many of the reviewers here have noted, doesn't really add much that you wouldn't know had you been reading the papers for the last few years. Also, as he was with his book on LTCM, he is good at wisdom after the fact and retains a weakness for the cute aphorism, though he is more circumspect with it here and doesn't allow the neat turn of phrase to undermine his argument in quite the same way. Certainly, Lowenstein writes well; the book moves at a nice clip, and you never really get the chance to be bogged down. For all that, I thought Origins of the Crash was a far more measured work than Partnoy's Infectious Greed (though not quite so comprehensive), and a better overview of the whole situation than Cassidy's Dot Con, but ultimately short on new insight or analysis. If you're looking for an entertaining overview, though, this might just be the book for you.
Rating:
Summary: Lowenstein does it again
Review: For lovers of Lowenstein's other books (When Genius Failed and Buffett) this page turner will not disappoint. Lowenstein has a true gift. Not only does he make the financial layperson comprehend the complicated world of off balance sheet partnerships and corporate boardrooms, he makes it exciting ... and it isn't even fiction! A job well done.
Rating: 
Summary: Could Have Used Some Empiricism
Review: Having read "When Genius Failed", I looked forward to this book. What this book does a great job of is a summation of the market from the 70s forward. It could be a great additional reading book in a college finance class as you will learn quite of what to do and not do. But where the book may have missed its mark is there is no new ground covered. "When Genius Failed" covered a very intricate subject and went in to great depth to explain. The multitude of subjects did not give Lowenstein that option for this book so it reads similar to long newspaper exposes with some additional commentary. Overall I enjoyed this book and recommend it. But please make sure it matches what you are looking for. A good history summation is what you have.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Summation
Review: Having read "When Genius Failed", I looked forward to this book. What this book does a great job of is a summation of the market from the 70s forward. It could be a great additional reading book in a college finance class as you will learn quite of what to do and not do. But where the book may have missed its mark is there is no new ground covered. "When Genius Failed" covered a very intricate subject and went in to great depth to explain. The multitude of subjects did not give Lowenstein that option for this book so it reads similar to long newspaper exposes with some additional commentary. Overall I enjoyed this book and recommend it. But please make sure it matches what you are looking for. A good history summation is what you have.
Rating:
Summary: Sadly Derivative
Review: I agree with much of what has been said in the other reviews; particularly, that most of what is said here as already been said by others, often more lucidly and without the vitriol. I much preferred reading the Times' coverage. The book also seemed pretty quickly put together; there were a couple of obvious factual errors, and other sections looked like they were thrown in at the last minute. The overall impression that I received was of a book desperately done on a deadline, which affected both the tone (righteous) and substantive content (often derivative) of the text. I would have much preferred the book had Lowenstein taken the time to do this book right, with a fresh approach and a least a little new insight. I know that Lowenstein has many loyal readers who would happily declare "brilliant" anything he writes. I like his stuff too, usually. But this book is just not up to standards. I know he could do better if he tried, but he just didn't do so here. And that's the harsh but accurate truth about this book.
Rating:
Summary: Better than Galbraith
Review: I am a huge fan of Lowenstein's financial reporting, both in book and article form, and was not disappointed by this book. The thing I would add to the other reviews is that Origins of the Crash is a much more important book than John Kenneth Galbraith's The Great Crash. Although Lowenstein modeled the book on Galbraith, his is a serious work of history and journalism, The Great Crash is amusing and sporadically insightful, but makes no sustained deep points. The books are equally fun to read, which says a lot about Lowenstein's talent.
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