Book excerpt: During a single historic weekend, September 12-14 2008, the fate of Lehman Brothers was sealed, Merrill Lynch barely survived and AIG became a ward of the federal government. Top CNBC anchor Maria Bartiromo spent the entire weekend taking frantic phone calls from the most powerful players on Wall Street. Now she draws on her high-level connections to provide an eyewitness account of the biggest events of the financial crisis, including a huge number of in-depth interviews.