Fo r mo r e than a decade, Henry Kravis a nd Geo r ge Roberts have been archetypes, first of Wall Street's boom years a nd then of its excesses. Their sto r y a nd that of their firm--the biggest, most successful, a nd most controversial participant in the age of leverage--illuminates an entire era of financial maneuvering a nd speculative mania. Kravis a nd Roberts wrote their way into the histo r y books by concocting one giant takeover after another. Their technique: the leveraged buyout, an audacious way to acquire a company with bo r rowed money, bo r rowed management--a nd a lot of nerve. Their firm, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts &, Co., dominated the Wall Street scene in the late 1980s, acquiring one Fo r tune 500 company after another, including Safeway, Duracell, Motel 6, a nd RJR Nabisco. Merchants of Debt draws on mo r e than 200 interviews, including recurring access to the central figures a nd their KKR associates, as well as court documents a nd private co r respondence to couch giant financial issues in human terms. The sto r y of KKR shows how pride, jealousy, fear, a nd ambition fueled Wall Street's debt mania--with consequences that affected hundreds of thousa nds of people. a nders addresses three questions: Why did American business become so enchanted by debt in the 1980s? How exactly did Kravis a nd Roberts rise to the top of the heap? What have buyouts, especially KKR's deals, done to America's economic strength? Here is a gripping saga that takes readers behind closed boardroom doo r s to show how star-struck young bankers, ruthless deal-makers, a nd nervous CEOs changed one another's lives--a nd the whole American economy--over a fifteen-year span.