Reviews
New York Times Review
“Henriques’s narrative is full of complex financial instruments and institutions. She has sweated gallons of blood to make it readable and succeeded by bringing her characters to life.”
Read the full review.
Daniel Okrent Review
“Astute readers have long known that Diana Henriques is a fine writer and a powerful reporter. Here, though, she demonstrates a new skill: superb historian. Her account of Wall Street in the time of its greatest crisis, and of the men who brought it to heel, is simply outstanding.”
—Daniel Okrent, author of Last Call and The Guarded Gate
Joe Berlinger Review
“This is historical storytelling at its best! With vivid characters, cinematic settings, and nonstop pacing, Diana Henriques brings to life a real-life political battle from the 1930s that is still deeply relevant almost a century later. It is a vital story—a rare instance when Washington faced down Wall Street’s titans and summoned the courage to get it right.”
—Joe Berlinger, award-winning documentary filmmaker and director of the Netflix series Madoff: Monster of Wall Street
A First Class Catastrophe Wins Best Business Book Honor from Strategy + Business
“The simple truth was that financial institutions could no longer be allowed to fail — the links among them were [in the words of Longstreth] ‘simply too extensive to prevent one failure from triggering another.’”
Read the full article here.
Chicago Tribune: “First-Class Catastrophe” is the Perfect Gift!
“Henriques notes the crash was actually seven years in the making, and she also demonstrates how it was the predicate to the financial crisis of 2008. Sadly, investors, regulators and bankers failed to heed the lessons of 1987, even as the same patterns resurfaced.”
Read the full article here.
NY Times Book Review
“Henriques gives us a gripping, almost minute-by-minute account of the weeks that followed, including the posturings, the denials and the panics, as well as the “web of trust, pluck and improvisation” that pulled the markets through.”
Read the full review.
Washington Post Review
“A first-class cautionary tale that should be on every financial regulator’s and policymaker’s desk — and many an investor’s, too.”
Read the full review here.
Wall Street Journal Review of “A First-Class Catastrophe”
“a narrative history . . . rich in interviews and archival research and personalized with vivid descriptions of the actors and conflicts involved.”
“Her writing is so skillful that even mathematical risk-mitigation techniques and arcane turf wars . . . are infused with life.”
Read the full review here.
Market Watch Review/Opinion
“Black Monday was the contagious crisis that the system nearly didn’t survive. All the key fault lines that trembled in 2008 … were first exposed as hazards in 1987.”
Read the full article here.
Library Journal Review
“The author’s journalistic storytelling will bring a deeper understanding of Black Monday to all readers the same way Andrew Sorkin’s ‘Too Big To Fail’ did for the 2008 crisis.”
