Ugly Americans, Ben Mezrich
Ugly Americans, Ben Mezrich
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Ugly Americans

Author: Ben Mezrich

Narrator: TBD

Abridged: 5 hr 25 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 05/04/2004

Synopsis

Ugly Americans is the true story of John Malcolm, a Princeton graduate who traveled halfway around the world in search of the American dream and pulled off a trade that could be described as the biggest deal in the history of the financial markets.Without speaking a word of Japanese, with barely a penny in his pocket, Malcolm was thrown into the bizarre life of an ex-pat trader. Surrounded by characters ripped right out of a Hollywood thriller, he quickly learned how to survive in a cutthroat world -- at the feet of the biggest players the markets have ever known.Malcolm was first an assistant trading huge positions for Nick Leeson, the rogue trader who brought down Barings Bank -- the oldest in England. He was the right-hand man to an enigmatic and brilliant hedge-fund cowboy, Dean Carney, and grew into one of the biggest derivatives traders in all of Asia. Along the way, Malcolm fell in love with the daughter of a Yakuza gangster, built a vast fortune out of thin air, and came head to head with violent Japanese mobsters. Malcolm and his twentysomething, Ivy League-schooled colleagues rode the crashing waves of the Asian markets during the mid-to late 1990s, culminating in a single deal the likes of which had never been seen before, or since.A real-life mixture of Liar’s Poker and Wall Street, brimming with intense action, romance, underground sex, vivid locales, and exotic characters, Ugly Americans is the untold, true story that will rock the financial community and redefine an era.

About Ben Mezrich

Ben Mezrich graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 1991. He has published twelve books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Accidental Billionaires, which was adapted into the Academy Award-winning film The Social Network, and Bringing Down the House, which has sold more than 1.5 million copies in twelve languages and became the basis for the Kevin Spacey movie 21. Mezrich has also published the national bestsellers Sex on the Moon, Ugly Americans, Rigged, and Busting Vegas. He lives in Boston.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jesse on February 14, 2010

This is a just-OK book; I did enjoy it it but it's written (as the author points out) for people who don't read much. It represents a new genre of "guy chick-lit"; thrillers with a focus on getting rich quick and beating the system. If you are interested in Japan, being an "expat", and general risky......more

Goodreads review by Patrick on September 26, 2011

Ugly Americans by Ben Mezrich is billed as “The true story of the ivy league cowboys who raided the Asian markets for millions.” However, it comes across as fiction. I realize that certain details had to be changed to protect sources. I think that he did manage to get a lot of the details right, but......more

Goodreads review by Tung on January 09, 2008

I read Mezrich’s other novel two years ago (Bringing Down the House) – a “nonfiction” account of Ivy League Whizkids who’d developed a method for winning millions from Vegas by counting cards. Consider Ugly Americans that book’s sequel on speed. Instead of casinos, we have Ivy League Whizkids gaming......more

Goodreads review by George on October 21, 2023

Many movies make the claim "Based on a True Story". Supposedly this makes the movie more interesting. While reading this book, I thought that in fact many novels could also make the claim that they are based on true stories. One thinks about these things while reading this book because while it clai......more

Goodreads review by Owen on November 23, 2011

Good book, light reading, funny and a great story to tell, yakuza characters and Japanese sex stories, well worth the read. This is not an instructional book about how markets collapse or a Michael Lewis-type book that will be misconstrued as a path to ibanking. It's a story. A bit of hero worship,......more

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