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Andrew Ross Sorkin delivers the first true behind-the-scenes, moment-by-moment account of how the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression developed into a global tsunami. From inside the corner office at Lehman Brothers to secret meetings in South Korea, and the corridors of Washington, Too Big to Fail is the definitive story of the most powerful men and women in finance and politics grappling with success and failure, ego and greed, and, ultimately, the fate of the world’s economy.

“We’ve got to get some foam down on the runway!” a sleepless Timothy Geithner, the then-president of the Federal Reserve of New York, would tell Henry M. Paulson, the Treasury secretary, about the catastrophic crash the world’s financial system would experience.

Through unprecedented access to the players involved, Too Big to Fail re-creates all the drama and turmoil, revealing neverdisclosed details and elucidating how decisions made on Wall Street over the past decade sowed the seeds of the debacle. This true story is not just a look at banks that were “too big to fail,” it is a real-life thriller with a cast of bold-faced names who themselves thought they were too big to fail.

An account of the most tumultuous week in America's financial history - the financial meltdown of 2008 - by an acclaimed young New York Times financial reporter. Andrew Ross Sorkin is The New York Times's chief mergers and acquisitions reporter and a columnist.

“Comprehensive and chilling.”
—Time

“. . . His action scenes are intimate and engaging.” 
—The New Yorker

“Sorkin’s prodigious reporting and lively writing put the reader in the room for some of the biggest-dollar conference calls in history. It’s an entertaining book, brisk book . . . Sorkin skillfully captures the raucous enthusiasm and riotous greed that fueled this rational irrationality.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“Brings the drama alive with unusual inside access and compelling detail . . . A deeply researched account of the financial meltdown."
—BusinessWeek

“Meticulously researched . . . told brilliantly. Other blow-by-blow accounts are in the works. It is hard to imagine them being this riveting.”
—The Economist

“Sorkin’s densely detailed and astonishing narrative of the epic financial crisis of 2008 is an extraordinary achievement that will be hard to surpass as the definitive account . . . as a dramatic close-up, his book is hard to beat.”
—Financial Times

“Sorkin’s book, like its author, is a phenom . . . an absolute tour de force.”
—The American Prospect

“Andrew Ross Sorkin pens what may be the definitive history of the banking crisis.”
—The Atlantic Monthly

“Andrew Ross Sorkin has written a fascinating, scene-by-scene saga of the eyeless trying to march the clueless through Great Depression II.”
—Tom Wolfe

“Sorkin has succeeded in writing the book of the crisis, with amazing levels of detail and access.”
—Reuters

“Sorkin can write. His storytelling makes Liar’s Poker look like a children’s book.”
—SNL Financial