«Street Freak: Money and Madness at Lehman Brothers» by Jared Dillian

Like Michael Lewis’s classic Liar’s Poker, Jared Dillian’s Street Freak takes us behind the scenes of the legendary Lehman Brothers, exposing its outrageous and often hilarious corporate culture and offering a “candid look at the demise of a corporate behemoth” (Publishers Weekly).

In the ultracompetitive Ivy League world of Wall Street, Jared Dillian was an outsider as an ex-military, working-class guy in a Men’s Wearhouse suit. But he was scrappy and determined; in interviews he told potential managers that “Nobody can work harder than me. Nobody is willing to put in the hours I will put in. I am insane.” As it turned out, at Lehman Brothers insanity was not an undesirable quality.

Dillian rose from green associate, checking IDs at the entrance to the trading floor in the paranoid days following 9/11, to become an integral part of Lehman’s culture in its final years as the firm’s head Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) trader. More than $1 trillion in wealth passed through his hands, yet the extreme highs and lows of the trading floor masked and exacerbated the symptoms of Dillian’s undiagnosed bipolar and obsessive-compulsive disorders, leading to a downward spiral that nearly ended his life.

In his electrifying and fresh voice, Dillian takes readers on a wild ride through madness and back.