Where to Start with Andrew Ross Sorkin: A Reading Guide
Where to start with Andrew Ross Sorkin — how to approach Too Big to Fail, his definitive account of the 2008 financial crisis. A complete reading guide.
By Marcus Webb
Andrew Ross Sorkin (born 1977) is an American financial journalist, columnist, and television host who is the founder of the DealBook newsletter and conference at the New York Times and a co-anchor of CNBC’s Squawk Box. Too Big to Fail (2009) is his account of the 2008 financial crisis, researched through hundreds of interviews with the major participants — giving him access to reconstructed scenes inside the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department, and the boardrooms of the major banks during the days and weeks when the global financial system came closest to collapse.
Where to Start: Too Big to Fail (2009)
The essential Sorkin — and the definitive narrative account of the 2008 financial crisis. Too Big to Fail is built on extraordinary reporting: Sorkin spoke to virtually every major participant — Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, New York Fed President Tim Geithner, and the CEOs and senior executives of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, AIG, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and every other major institution involved — and reconstructed their conversations, arguments, and decisions with a level of detail that gives the book the immediacy of fiction and the authority of journalism.
The book’s centre of gravity is the September 2008 weekend when Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. Paulson, Bernanke, and Geithner spent that weekend trying to arrange a private-sector rescue for Lehman — the approach that had worked with Bear Stearns six months earlier. The rescue failed because the potential acquirers (Barclays, Bank of America) pulled back, and because Paulson had decided publicly that no further government bailouts would be forthcoming. On Monday morning, Lehman filed for bankruptcy, and what followed was the worst financial crisis since 1929.
Sorkin’s account of these events is remarkable for the intimacy of its access. He reconstructs the specific arguments — who thought what, who pushed back on whom, what information was available and what was not — with enough precision to give the reader a genuine sense of what it felt like to be making those decisions under those pressures with that level of uncertainty. The human portraits that emerge — Paulson’s physical anxiety, Tim Geithner’s analytical composure, Dick Fuld’s denial about Lehman’s situation — are drawn with the complexity of nonfiction that takes its subjects seriously.
The book’s analytical weakness — acknowledged by its critics — is that it is closer to the decision-makers than to their critics, and does not fully engage with the structural causes of the crisis or the question of whether the bailouts were the right response. Michael Lewis’s The Big Short, which covers the same crisis from the perspective of the people who saw it coming, provides the analytical counterpart. But as a document of what happened inside those rooms and what those decisions felt like to the people making them, Too Big to Fail has not been surpassed.
Reading Andrew Ross Sorkin
Too Big to Fail is Sorkin’s essential work. It stands alone and requires no prior reading.
For the full Andrew Ross Sorkin bibliography, reviews, and biography, visit the Andrew Ross Sorkin author page on Editors Reads.
Affiliate disclosure: Links to Amazon on this page are affiliate links. We earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where should I start with Andrew Ross Sorkin?
Too Big to Fail (2009) is Sorkin's essential book — the most comprehensive account of the 2008 financial crisis, reconstructed from extraordinary access to virtually every major participant: Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, the CEOs of the major banks, and the regulators who spent September 2008 trying to prevent a second Great Depression. The definitive narrative companion to The Big Short's analytical account.
What is Too Big to Fail about?
Too Big to Fail covers the 2008 financial crisis from the collapse of Bear Stearns in March 2008 through the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, the AIG bailout, and the passage of TARP in the autumn. Sorkin reconstructs the crisis hour by hour and day by day — the weekend meetings, the boardroom arguments, the phone calls — drawing on interviews with the major participants to produce a novelistic account of the most significant financial event since 1929.
Is Too Big to Fail one-sided in its portrayal of the crisis?
Too Big to Fail is closer to the participants than to their critics, and Sorkin does not fully engage with the structural causes of the crisis or the question of whether the bailouts were the right response. The book excels at the inside narrative — what it felt like to be in those rooms, what decisions were made and why — and is less analytical about the systemic forces that produced the crisis. Michael Lewis's The Big Short provides the analytical counterpart.
What should I read after Too Big to Fail?
After Too Big to Fail, Michael Lewis's The Big Short covers the same crisis from the perspective of the people who bet against the housing market and saw the collapse coming — more analytical and wittier, less inside-the-room. Ben Bernanke's The Courage to Act is the Fed chairman's own account of the decisions he made. Roger Lowenstein's When Genius Failed covers the 1998 LTCM crisis as a precursor with comparable narrative detail.
