High Finance
A Novel
by Ken Miller
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Pub Date Sep 02 2025 | Archive Date Nov 15 2025
Stable Book Group | Ulysses Press
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Description
Told from the perspectives of those in and around the pathways of money and power, High Finance is a debut novel that takes us inside one of the most volatile periods in Wall Street’s history through the lens of Jed Czincosca, who came to Wall Street from Chicago in 1977 to get rich and rise to the pinnacle of American success.
He did what it takes to make it to the top, letting nothing hold him back. While orchestrating multibillion-dollar deals and becoming spectacularly wealthy, Jed binges on pot and alcohol, trades on inside information, cheats on his wife, and becomes one of Wall Street’s key players. At the dawn of the new century, with a monomaniacal obsession Jed borrows to buy as many shares of Lehman Brothers as he can get his hands on, only to be wiped out on that fateful September day when Lehman was fed to the wolves. Forced from his four-bedroom duplex on Park Avenue to a cheap rental in the working-class town of Patchogue, is redemption and resurrection for Jed even possible?
Through a kaleidoscope of voices—his wife, his British secretary, his Marxist brother, the Lehman "informant,” an internal auditor dedicated to Jed’s destruction, and others—we come to intimately understand Jed and how the unpredictable external forces to which we are all susceptible shape and define us.
The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers was a pivotal moment in the 2008 crash of the financial markets that led to job losses, a housing market crisis, and a global recession whose effects are still being felt to this day. In telling the story of one man at the center of this moment, Ken Miller offers us a new perspective on Wall Street in the twenty-first century.
Advance Praise
“Ken Miller’s High Finance is a brilliant read, funny and poignant, with an insider’s knowledge of Wall Street. I couldn’t put it down.”
—Elliot Ackerman, The New York Times bestselling author of 2034
“This engaging novel about a flawed financier is written by a gifted storyteller who knows the ins and outs of high finance from his days as a senior Wall Street executive and one of the financial sector’s biggest producers.”
— David Rockefeller, Jr., Director of Rockefeller Capital Management
“High Finance brings a new authoritative voice to fiction from the cutthroat world of elite investment banking. As a reader I experienced many moments of mirth and even found myself laughing out loud at this new, inventive novel in stories.”
— Esmeralda Santiago, author of When I Was Puerto Rican
“High Finance is an accurate, trenchant and hilarious work. I recommend it to all who love good writing and are interested in a practitioner’s humor-filled take on Wall Street’s inner sanctum.”
—Robert B. Millard, Chairman Emeritus the MIT Corporation
Available Editions
EDITION | Hardcover |
ISBN | 9781646048656 |
PRICE | $27.95 (USD) |
PAGES | 264 |
Links
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews

High Finance by Ken Miller--This book is about the fall of Lehman Brothers, told in a way that is imminently relatable. Captured in a series of vignettes showing the impact of Lehman Brothers and its fall, this fictional story gives Miller the creative license to tell a truly insightful story about human condition and connection. Given Miller's background as former vice chairman of both Credit Suisse and Merrill Lynch, it's tough not to read his characters closest to Lehman as self-inserts. In that way, then, the book is a really poignant, introspective examination of how one person's action or inaction can haunt them. I really enjoyed this book, and recommend it to anyone interested in this topic. I should point out, for transparency, that I did receive an advance copy of this book to review, and it comes out in September. Thumbs up.