NYT Rave for Lanchester’s IOU
New York Times book critic Dwight Garner is at it again – writing a review that immediately compels you to pick up a book you might not have given a second glance, based on his confident comparisons to similar titles, his sensitivity to good writing, and his own seductive storytelling flair.
This time it is I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay, a look at the roots of the global financial crisis by English novelist John Lancaster (The Debt to Pleasure), who began by researching a novel but found the facts so compelling he chose to write a work of nonfiction. It’s already up to #94 on Amazon.
Forty-six libraries have this book, according to World Cat. Those we checked show reserve ratios of five to one on modest orders.
Here are a few of Garner’s most compelling endorsements of the book:
“Few if any [similar] books will be as pleasurable — and by that I mean as literate or as wickedly funny — as John Lanchester’s.”
“If you don’t know how derivatives or credit default swaps work, or what securitization is, or why futures are riskier than options, this is a book for you.”
“Mr. Lanchester’s history lesson is peppered with dead-on references to everything, including ‘Annie Hall,’ ‘The Simpsons,’ ‘The Wire,’ Hemingway and Jacques Derrida. He is effortlessly epigrammatical.”
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