"This extraordinary time has left us with a giant puzzle - a mystery, really - that still needs to be solved, so we can learn from our mistake. This book is an effort to begin putting those pieces together." Prologue, p. 7

"Despite his recent infatuation with leverage, Fuld believed in liquidity. He always had. You always needed a lot of cash on hand to ride out the storm, he would say." Chapter 1, p. 15

"On Wall Street, there are two kinds of bankers: the silky smooth salesmen who succeed based on wits and charm, and those who persist with bulldog tenacity. Paulson was of the latter type, as the white House soon discovered." Chapter 2, p. 41

"The following day, Friday, March 14, the Federal Reserve funneled a loan through JP Morgan to Bear Stearns that would end its immediate liquidity concerns and give the firm twenty-eight days to work out a...