House of Cards

CNBC financial reporter Cohan's account of the sudden collapse of the Wall Street firm Bear Stearns last March is largely interview based. This fine production is undoubtedly only the first of many books on the current market crisis, and Alan Sklar is the perfect narrator for conveying the tough vernacularism of these (almost-entirely) male voices. The cast is large, hard to keep track of, and through the book's long first part--a "minute-by-minute" reconstruction of the collapse--each voice recounts a variation on the same basic epiphany: "We're finished." The voices merge into one, and what comes across most distinctly is Sklar's rendition of the Wall Street personality: brusque, cynical, assured to the point of arrogance--the voice of hubris. D.A.W. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine