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Street Fighters: The Last 72 Hours of Bear Stearns, the Toughest Firm on Wall Street By Kate Kelly Portfolio; 247 pages

Bear stearns was our warning shot. Back in March 2008, when the 85-year-old investment bank collapsed, we didn't yet know how common it would be for a financial firm to be brought to its knees over a panicked long weekend. The Wall Street Journal's Kate Kelly takes us inside Bear's last, dizzying days: the lawyers swarming the sixth floor, the pleading phone calls to investors for emergency billions, the sickening realization that a lifesaving loan from the Federal Reserve would last two days--not 28. Kelly flicks at Bear Stearns' backstory--how its eat-what-you-kill culture and deep dive into mortgage securities sowed the seeds of its demise--but the real draw is the book's surgical detail. The day Bear sold itself to JPMorgan Chase for a paltry $2 a share, its CEO, worn down by round-the-clock negotiations, stood in a Starbucks and softly cried as he waited for his coffee. Street Fighters won't hold up as the most comprehensive history of how high finance fell apart in 2008. But it may be remembered as the most human.

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