Short Stuff: The Death of Charles Morgan

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI is about the Osage Reign of Terror—the 1920s organized killings of members of the oil-rich Osage Indians. Powerful and bigoted whites systematically exploited and murdered the Osage people to expropriate their wealth, showing us the horrors that result when racism and greed align. The murders were also a major catalyst for the growth of the FBI, and the triumph of its rational and scientific vision of law enforcement—and a shift away from the era of frontier justice, corrupt and incompetent local sheriffs, and rogue “lawmen.”

“Sex, drugs, and stock manipulation” are the words that describe the world of Jordan Belfort and his brokerage firm, Stratton Oakmont. Belfort and his staff of young traders became incredibly rich via illegal trading practices, then used their wealth to indulge their every hedonistic whim. The Wolf of Wall Street is Belfort’s confessional memoir of his illegal actions, which led to a self-destructive spiral into drug addiction and life-threatening behavior.

In this guide, we’ll explain how Belfort grew his wealth through stock manipulation and money laundering, how he attempted to evade prosecution for his crimes, and how his lifestyle of drug abuse and self-indulgence almost killed him before he accepted the need to change. This guide will also examine whether Belfort’s crimes are still commonplace in modern finance, how the acquisition of wealth affects people, and how drug addiction and recovery can alter a person’s self-awareness and sense of accountability.

The cynical view of the financial world says that Wall Street is run by a special breed of traders who exploit investors’ collective fear and greed to enrich themselves however they can, without any care for the havoc they might wreak. In Liar’s Poker, Michael Lewis backs up this opinion with a first-hand account of the pursuit of ill-gotten riches at the Salomon Brothers investment firm during the 1980s. As a Salomon employee, Lewis took part in its wealth-chasing culture and witnessed the start of its downward spiral.

This guide will explore Lewis’s portrayal of Wall Street, the boom and bust of the mortgage bond market, and the rise of junk bond investments. We’ll also take a broader look at the financial world and alternate views showing there’s room for ethics and level-headed investing. We’ll conclude with Salomon Brothers’ troubles in the 1990s, which occurred after this book’s publication.

In just a few years, Sam Bankman-Fried went from being a relative nobody to the architect of a cryptocurrency empire whose net worth neared $30 billion. But, even quicker than his empire burst onto the scene, it crumbled in November 2022 with the news that his cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, had lost nearly $10 billion of its clients’ money. In Going Infinite (2023), financial journalist Michael Lewis provides a rare glimpse into the inner workings of Bankman-Fried’s meteoric rise and fall. And although Bankman-Fried has been convicted of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy, Lewis suggests that the case against Bankman-Fried is less damning than outsiders believe.

In this guide, we’ll break down Going Infinite into three main parts, first examining Lewis’s portrayal of the enigmatic Bankman-Fried himself before proceeding to the rise and precipitous collapse of his cryptocurrency empire. We’ll also discuss alternative accounts of Bankman-Fried’s actions at FTX and dive deeper into the nature of cryptocurrency that lay at the heart of FTX.

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI is about the Osage Reign of Terror—the 1920s organized killings of members of the oil-rich Osage Indians. Powerful and bigoted whites systematically exploited and murdered the Osage people to expropriate their wealth, showing us the horrors that result when racism and greed align. The murders were also a major catalyst for the growth of the FBI, and the triumph of its rational and scientific vision of law enforcement—and a shift away from the era of frontier justice, corrupt and incompetent local sheriffs, and rogue “lawmen.”