When Lloyd Blankfein was attacked as a Wall Street fat cat, little did people know of his precarious childhood in the public housing projects of Brooklyn, and a high school so chaotic he didn't feel safe enough to use the bathroom. Harvard was a total moon shot, and his outsider status never wore off. When he struck people as street-y, it wasn't Wall Street they were thinking of. But if the chip never quite left the shoulder, neither did a wry, resilient spirit, and an intelligence that found talent and ideas in unlikely places.

Street Wise is a delightfully honest, sharp and often very funny reckoning with Blankfein's education - in finance, human nature and the workings of the world. It abounds with lessons - about leading teams of brilliant, aggressive, competitive people and harmonising them around shared goals; about changing when times are hard and when they're good; about managing risk; and about knowing a crisis is at hand before it swamps you. Blankfein is famed for his calm hand on Goldman's tiller during the global financial crisis of 2007-2008, and that story is told in full here among many other decisive episodes.

A marvelous blueprint for wise leadership, Street Wise will inspire and inform readers throughout the global business community, and beyond.