After a 17-year career as an investment banker at Lazard Freres & Co., Merrill Lynch and JPMorganChase, William D. Cohan switched gears to become an investigative journalist and a New York Times-bestselling author. His narratives provide in-depth, non-fiction accounts of some of the most important stories of our day.

While he has been unafraid - especially after the financial crisis - to criticize the bad behavior of an industry he knows inside and out, Cohan’s upcoming book Why Wall Street Matters is a timely defense of our private financial institutions. His book illustrates why, no matter your profession or political preferences, it is important to understand the role Wall Street plays in making all of our lives better. 

We are pleased that Mr. Cohan has agreed to join Smith Soc_NYC at a private salon dinner to discuss his new book, as well as the state of the finance industry generally--amongst many other topics. Space is limited, so RSVP today. We hope to see you on January 31st!

William D. Cohan is the New York Times bestselling author of three non-fiction narratives about Wall Street -- Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World; House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street; and, The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co., the winner of the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award.

He is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and writes a weekly opinion column for BloombergView. He also writes for The Financial Times, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, The Atlantic, ArtNews, the Irish Times, the Washington Post and the New York Times Magazine. He previously wrote a bi-weekly opinion column for The New York Times and features for Fortune. He also appears regularly on MSNBC, on Bloomberg TV, where he is a contributing editor, and on CNN, CurrentTV and the BBC-TV. He has also appeared as a guest on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The NewsHour, The Charlie Rose Show, and the Tavis Smiley Show, as well as on numerous NPR, BBC and Bloomberg radio programs. He is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University School of Journalism and the Columbia University Graduate School of Business.