I closed out the year reading about the same topic that I started it with, which seemed fitting. Michael Milken, Drexel Burnham, and the rockin' '80s. This book was actually written even before Den of Thieves, so it has very few details on the federal case against Milken. In fact, the book doesn't really cover his illegal activity very much at all... it's not even that condemning of him. It pretty much paints him as a visionary that bent the rules as he trail blazed into a brave new world.

At first I didn't like it. The book doesn't have the narrative that Den of Thieves (DoT) does, so reading it second makes it seem quite boring in comparison. There is no drive, just a timeline of events. But what it lacks in drama it makes up for with detail- the book goes into a lot more detail of the junk bond process, how it started, and how it took off. It gave background that I didn't get from DoT. More than anything else though, I hadn't really realized just how much Milken and DBL changed finance. He pretty much invented the corporate takeover.

Another quick takeaway here was just the power of investing in things that other people aren't into. The book has a long chapter on Carl Icahn and how started off making his fortune trading options. He was really interested in them at a time when no one else really was, right when they were beginning to get traded (before Black-Scholes), and found a way to make a killing.