Full of ideas, and brilliant phrases, Cosmopolis is written with the sort of intensity you simply don't get elsewhere.

Cosmopolis is both intimathe are global ,a vivid and moving account of the space down fall of one man...and of an era.

It is an April day in the year 2000. The booming times of market optimism--when the culture boiled with money and corporations seemed more vital and influential than governments--are poised to crash. Eric Packer, a billionaire asset manager at age twenty-eight, settles into his lavishly customized white stretch limousine.Today he is a man with two missions: to pursue a cataclysmic bet against the yen and to get a hair cut across town. Stalled in traffic by a presidential motorcade, a music idol"s funeral, and a violent political demonstration, Eric meets with his expertson security, technology, currency, finance, and theory, and with an array of lovers and sexual partners.