Since I’ve spent much of this decade inveighing against the debt-driven housing bubble in reports, columns, and other venues, I welcomed the chance to read The Foreclosure of America. As one of the first insider accounts of Countrywide Financial, the mortgage giant at the center of the mania, Adam Michaelson’s book gave me the illicit feeling that I had stormed enemy headquarters and found its battle plan. Not surprisingly, that plan was not terribly impressive.

Michaelson was in middle management at Countrywide through the peak years of the housing boom. He started in 2003 and was given his