Narrates Goldman Sachs’ rise to national prominence in investment banking and charts its transformation into a prop-trading powerhouse as well as a ‘crony capitalist’. Through the first half of the 20th century, Syd Weinberg and Gus Levy dominated proceedings, even as the limited partnership developed corporate best practices (exemplified by John Whitehead’s famous 10 points). Though the author continues portraying the company’s leading lights through Jan Corzine, Hank Paulson, John Thain, and Lloyd Bankfein, the latter pages also seek to outline how the transformation to a public company and trading its own accounts put the bank at odds with its commercial clients. The tension prefigured by previous conflicts is illustrated by detailed review of Goldman’s derivatives trading in mortgage products (including the word of Mike Swenson ’89). An easy and sometimes engrossing read, the book is somehow not quite coherent. It goes some ways toward identifying a solution to conflicts of interest, without definitely making a case for modernizing Glass-Steagall. Perhaps it should have been two books.