The Devil′s Casino

VICKY WARD has been a contributing editor to Vanity Fair since 2001, specializing in investigative reporting. She has profiled, among others, Jean-Marie Messier, Carly Fiorina, CIA agent Valerie Plame, businesswoman Louise MacBain, Morgan Stanley, the late Bruce Wasserstein, counterterrorism expert Rich-ard Clarke, Francois Pinault, the Getty, the Guggenheim, Fairfield Greenwich Group (a Madoff feeder fund), Brooke Astor, and Kate Moss. Ward is a weekly columnist for the Huffington Post and a contributor to CNBC. She was previously the executive editor of Talk magazine. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Financial Times, the London Times, and the Daily Telegraph. A native Briton, Ward was the runner-up for the Catherine Pakenham Award in 1994, Britain s most prestigious award for young women writers. She holds a master s degree in English literature from Cambridge University and has lived in New York City since 1997.

Cast of Characters. Prologue. Part One: The Ponderosa Boys. Chapter 1 A Long, Hot Summer. Chapter 2 The Beginning. Chapter 3 The Captain. Chapter 4 The Take-Under . Chapter 5 Slamex. Chapter 6 The Phoenix Rises. Chapter 7 Independence Day. Chapter 8 The Stiletto. Chapter 9 The Ides of March. Chapter 10 Eulogies. Part Two: The Echo Chamber. Chapter 11 Russian Winter. Chapter 12 Lehman s Desperate Housewives. Chapter 13 The Young Lions. Chapter 14 9/11. Chapter 15 No Ordinary Joe. Chapter 16 The Talking Head. Chapter 17 The Sacrificial Ram. Chapter 18 Korea s Rising Sum. Chapter 19 The Wart on the End of Lehman s Nose. Chapter 20 Damned Flood? Chapter 21 Closing the Books. Epilogue. A Note About the Sources. Notes. References. Acknowledgments. Index.