Marek Fuchs
Michael Lewis, who wrote Liar's Poker, worked for Salomon Brothers long enough to have a cup of coffee ... and write this book. It captures the start of a young man's journey on Wall Street and bull market headiness better than most, and though Lewis would go on to a nearly unrivaled career writing interesting books about business, this stands as his finest work.
In Bombardiers by Po Bronson, you get the comic spirit of bond desk life in one of the few -- perhaps only? -- business books that has ever had me laughing out loud on a train. You business school hacks -- if you don't read these two books before you interview, let alone start working on a trading desk, The Business Press Maven will personally seek you out for a series of particularly painful noogies. Another must-read book is Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, by Charles MacKay. You can read 100 books on everything from the tulip bulb craze to the more recent run-up in real estate. Or you can just read this book and understand how collective madness is born. This is an indispensable read. So you want to be a stock trader but you don't know much about either math or the media? That's a potential problem. Actually, that's a potential pair of problems. That's why you should, lickety-split, pick up a copy of John Allen Paulos' A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper. Though only a portion of the book is about business news, it hardly matters. Mathematical reason and the ability to correlate the proper subject with the most appropriate verb are rarely talents held in common, so as The Business Press Maven always point out, it's always reader beware. This book helps you learn to be more aware.
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