Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves

by Andrew Ross Sorkin

The urgency of getting the sale approved was growing more and more evident as with each passing hour the markets chipped away at the value of Lehman’s assets. Not only was the bankruptcy of Lehman, which had filed for Chapter 11 with $639 billion in assets, by far the largest in the nation’s history, but an unwinding of so complex a financial institution had never before been attempted.