“Junk,” the riveting reincarnation of the junk bond era now playing at Lincoln Center, “is a fictionalized account suggested by events in the historical public record,” according to an author’s note in the program. “The characters in this play are dramatic concoctions,” it reads, “stitched together — at times — with details pulled from history, but these characters are never anything other than fictions.”

But make no mistake about it: “Junk” is about as close to reality as theater gets.

I should know: I’m the author of “Den of Thieves,” which chronicled the rise and fall of Michael Milken and his junk bond empire and the cast of characters that whirled around him. The author of “Junk,” Ayad Akhtar, has cited my book and “The Predators’ Ball,” Connie Bruck’s pathbreaking account of Mr. Milken’s heyday at Drexel Burnham Lambert, as works that influenced his play.

Part of the fun of watching “Junk” is matching the characters to their real-life counterparts: the junk bond trader Robert Merkin (Mr. Milken); the arbitrageur Boris Pronsky (Ivan Boesky); the United States attorney Giuseppe Addesso (Rudolph Giuliani). Even their fictional names seem alliterative of those of their actual counterparts.

Other characters are less obvious. Is the “private equity” magnate Leo Tresler really Teddy Forstmann? Of the many old-line industrial firms that succumbed to Mr. Milken’s junk bond onslaught, which one is Everson Steel and United?