Book Review: Young Money by Kevin Roose

When Michael Lewis wrote Liar’s Poker in 1989, he hoped to discourage ambivalent young elites from starting careers on Wall Street. The opposite happened. His tales of hubris and reckless behavior among investment bankers seemed glamorous to a new generation of aspiring Gordon Gekkos, who flooded the author with letters asking how they could get in on the action. “They’d read my book as a how-to manual,” he later lamented.

Kevin Roose may have better luck with Young Money, his look at rookie bankers in the wake of the financial crisis. Where Lewis portrayed Wall Street as a rigged-to-blow casino, with dangerous amounts of money entrusted to near-adolescents, Roose writes something that prospective financiers will find far more damning: The work of first- and second-year analysts is tedious and soul-crushing and probably not worth the six-figure salary.