All I Could Get

Barry Schwartz has everything: two healthy young children, a strong marriage, a house in the Colorado mountains, and a job that lets him ski a hundred days in a good year. But at thirty, still paying off student loans and struggling to make the rent, he begins to think it isn’t enough.

All I Could Get is the story of the ultimately harrowing journey into the heart of New York’s financial world that Barry and his family take on the way to discovering what exactly is “enough.” With the voice of a born storyteller and an intimate knowledge of the business of high finance, Lasser gives us stunning scenes that capture the wry banter of the morning commute, the hardball diction of Wall Street, and the rhythms of a good marriage as it hits the skids. A novel of fierce momentum, studded with instances of piercing tenderness and clarity, All I Could Get is an indelible portrait of a family driven to a reckoning, of a man poised on the brink of terrible power and unspeakable loss, of the crushing effects of envy, and of the devastating force of the American dream.

Scott Lasser received an M.F.A. from the University of Michigan and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School. He was formerly a government bond trader at Lehman Brothers. He lives in Aspen, Colorado.