The Bear Stearns Interns Reading List. Did the Top Guys read these, too?

I was just looking thru some old files (this one is from Sept. 12, 2007) that I saved on my computer and came across this - the Reading List for the new Interns at Bear Stearns. Yes, that Bear Stearns. The one that the Fed recently delivered to JPMorgan Chase in the biggest shotgun marriage/merger/discount purchase in the history of the financial industry.

It seems that those Ivy League MBAs who were “lucky” enough to snag internships at Bear Stearns were given a little reading to do, to prepare them for the rigors of working at what used to be one of Wall Street’s most prestigious firms.

So, without further ado, here’s the Bear Stearns Reading List for Interns:
• Barbarians at the Gate by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar
• Beyond Greed and Fear: Understanding Behavioral Finance and the Psychology of Investing by Hersh Shefrin
• Confessions of a Street Addict by Jim Cramer
• Den of Thieves by James B. Stuart
• Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation by Edward Chancellor
• Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis
• Monkey Business: Swinging Through the Wall Street Jungle by John Rolfe and Peter Troob
• Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefèvre
• The Mind of Wall Street by Leon Levy
• The Predator’s Ball by Connie Bruck
• Wall Street Meat: My Narrow Escape from the Stock Market Grinder by Andy Kessler
• When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management by Roger Lowenstein

Now, I never worked on Wall Street. But I have read quite a few of those books. And I would never think that most of the books on this list would be of really any professional value to an Ivy League MBA grad. What do you think?