I've read all of Michael Lewis's books, and this one is astonishing.
As ever, the financial/economic analysis is spot on, and the author has an unerring knack for seeing through swirls of events and extracting the few watershed ones that lead to fateful developments. His description of the one decision that led to the Irish meltdown, for instance, is vintage Lewis.
But whatever happened to Michael Lewis? His comments on the countries he visits seem often gratuitously downputting, sometimes outright bigoted, and unwarranted. How did this manuscript go through without major editing? According to the author, most Icelanders are quote mousy-haired and lumpy unquote (well, I spent a week there, and from what I saw that's just a totally random description), the Greeks are all jaundiced and worse, we're treated to several astonishing, recurrent pages expounding forth as to how the Germans are deeply obsessed with human faeces (I lived in Germany for a couple of years and I can reassure you, this is utter random nonsense), somewhere he met with an official who happened to be trim and hairless and we're treated to several pages of how all 'fit white men who shave their heads' think and are and behave and what personal mantra they should have or not have. Did I pay good money to read such nonsense? Unbeknownst to us, was the author all along really a bigoted, provincial boeotian? Does the author believe he advances his own reputation with such fare? Totally puzzling. I'm still scratching my head.