Lite Lunch with Mary Childs

Please join us as we welcome the award-winning financial journalist Mary Childs as she paints a vivid picture of her book on Bill Gross - a once high powered Financier who, through mismanagement and recklessness, lost it all. Her in depth research of the finance world provides an accessible and illuminating description of the rise of the multitrillion-dollar bond market. Centering on a fascinating and entertaining character, Bill Gross, whose journey takes us right to the heart of the story of high finance over the last half century, Childs will describe how it all began and unraveled for the man who is credited with turning a once sleepy and low-risk corner of finance (bonds) into an exciting casino.

About the Book:

The Bond King is the story of how whiz kid, Bill Gross, made American finance his casino. Over the course of decades, Bill Gross turned the sleepy bond market into a destabilized game of high risk, high reward; founded Pimco, one of today’s most powerful, secretive, and cutthroat investment firms; helped to reshape our financial system in the aftermath of the Great Recession—to his own advantage; and gained legions of admirers, and enemies, along the way. Like every American antihero, his ambition would also be his undoing.

It's a vivid and authoritative portrait of one of the most influential figures in American finance, Bill Gross. How he created the market for trading bonds, how he dominated it, and built an empire -- to then be more or less ousted by his own firm. Few people and firms have had such an enormous impact shaping our world. It's also a wild story of pettiness and drama between billionaires.

About Mary Childs:

Mary Childs is the author of the bestselling book The Bond King: How One Man Made a Market, Built an Empire, and Lost It All and is a co-host at NPR’s Planet Money, one of the world’s most popular podcasts. She's been a reporter at Barron’s magazine, the Financial Times, and Bloomberg News. Before starting her career as a journalist, she spent a year traveling the world painting portraits as a Watson Fellow. She graduated from Washington & Lee with an honors thesis on the use and significance of sting operations in media in the U.S. and India. She lives in Virginia with her family.

Reviews & Blurbs:

"An instant classic of finance and a joy to read. Mary Childs has a gift for explaining the rise of the modern bond market, one of the most important stories of finance, and interlaces that story with the deeply reported, thrilling, tragic and occasionally comic human story of the downfall of Bill Gross. And it is all written with great style, wit and insight. Anyone looking to understand the nuances of bonds or the difficulties of managing complicated people should read this book." — Matt Levine, 'Money Stuff' columnist, Bloomberg Opinion

"A most necessary book. Mary Childs is one of a handful of finance writers who understand how the industry has reshaped America and helped create the strange, often failing society we inhabit. And one cannot understand modern finance without understanding the character of the mad bond king Bill Gross. Well-researched and written with verve, this is nothing short of a page-turner." — Gary Shteyngart, author of Our Country Friends and Lake Success