More than anything else, Lawrence McDonald wanted to work on Wall Street.

Twenty years ago, freshly graduated from college, he set out to find employment at a financial institution somewhere in the Northeast, thinking it would be his first steppingstone to the big leagues.

He sent out thousands of letters. He barged into offices, pretending to have appointments. On many occasions he impersonated a pizza delivery man. That ruse got him past secretaries and assistants, but it didn't help him land a job in financial services. His first post-college job was in sales, selling frozen pork.

Eventually, McDonald got into finance. He became an expert on bonds, then specialized even further into distressed debt -- bonds issued by companies in trouble. He made a small fortune with a dot-com startup, then worked for Morgan Stanley, which bought his company near the height of the Internet bubble.

About five years ago, he finally achieved the position he had been dreaming about for decades. He became a trader on Wall Street.

McDonald worked for Lehman Brothers, the company whose bankruptcy last September help push a serious credit crisis into a full-blown international financial panic. During his time there, he had a close-up view of the decisions made by Lehman that led to the firm's collapse.

The CEO of Lehman Brothers, Richard Fuld, was notorious for having a chip on his shoulder, much like his sponsor and mentor, Lew Glucksman, who pushed out the legendary financier Pete Peterson (who, after leaving Lehman, went on to co-found Blackstone Group and become a billionaire).

Fuld didn't much like hearing opinions that were contrary to his point of view. In fact, he rarely -- if at all -- communicated with some of the most important, senior members of the firm, including a number of managing partners.

Unfortunately, Fuld made a long string of costly decisions. He encouraged Lehman to invest in credit default swaps and other instruments whose risk he didn't fully appreciate.

He pushed the firm to diversify into commercial real estate when it became clear that the strength of the residential real estate market was slipping. In one notorious instance, he approved the purchase of an office building in Paris for $2.81 billion, which was sold a year later for a billion-dollar loss.

Some say he was trying to match the real estate investments of Peterson and other well-regarded financiers.

In hindsight, it is easy to notice the mistakes Fuld and Lehman made. But McDonald and his colleagues in distressed debt were noticing them as they were being made, before their full impact became known -- while there was still time to save the firm.

For example, he and his distressed debt colleagues made hundreds of millions of dollars for Lehman by shorting companies who were overexposed to the real estate market. Yet, Lehman held investments with similar -- or greater -- levels of risk as those held by the companies they shorted

Despite repeated efforts by many in Lehman to get the firm to back off from the risk on its balance sheet -- and reduce its ever-increasing leverage -- the ultimate decision-makers in the firm ignored those warnings.

Today, Lehman no longer exists.

This book is a satisfying read, as well as a good account of the factors behind the recent financial turbulence, and a complete explanation of Lehman's demise.

The great tragedy of the death of this historic, 150-plus year-old firm was not that unwise investments were made in the first place. People at all levels in society made similar misjudgments -- and will do so again.

Instead, it's the fact that the leaders of the firm couldn't shake off their hubris -- drop their greed to rake in yet another annual bonus in the tens of millions -- despite being given the right advice in ample time.

A lesson for us all, in this enjoyable book.