A highly dramatic but lucid introduction to the murky world of cryptocurrency.
In this debut memoir, Conway recounts his struggle to climb a corporate ladder and how investment in cryptocurrency gave him a way out.
Around 2010, the author scored what he calls a “golden ticket”—a blue-chip job at a major multimedia corporation with his own team, a budget, and a six-figure salary. He finally “felt dignified and gangster,” he says. However, he also notes that he was profoundly unhappy, frustrated with a “fake company culture [that] made me and most of my co-workers miserable” and unable to advance as quickly as he’d hoped. He says that his sense of self-worth was fragile and that he was perpetually unable to silence his “Flip Side, the bed-wetting, escapist gimp with bad judgment who lives in the basement of my personality.” He eventually turned to drugs as a balm for his anxiety, and he soon became addicted to Vicodin. After confessing this to his wife, he sought recovery at a rehabilitation center and became a devotee of 12-step optimism. However, he later lost his job, so he decided to bet money he really couldn’t afford to lose on “ether,” the currency of the Ethereum blockchain—one of the popular cryptocurrencies of the time. The author then thrillingly relates the consequences of this dramatic gamble, in which the stakes weren’t merely financial; he knew he would ultimately emerge as either a visionary or a reckless fool. But, he writes, he not only won, he won big—finally cashing out for millions of dollars in a life-transforming financial triumph. In this memoir, Conway skillfully combines three intersecting narratives involving his ego-driven, often self-destructive ambition; his cryptocurrency gamble; and the history of cryptocurrency in general. Along the way, the author stirringly describes how, to him, cryptocurrency investment wasn’t just a new technological innovation, but rather a way to escape the corporate world that he once set out to conquer. Indeed, his critique of corporate bureaucracy in this book is both astute and conveyed with verve. More than anything else, he asserts, the blockchain movement is about freeing oneself from the financial gatekeepers that stymie progress—and about profiting fabulously in the process: “I’m bringing this up simply as a reminder that decentralization used to be a reasonable priority for the common man and woman,” he writes. Over the course of the book, the author recounts his personal experience with admirable candor; specifically, he unflinchingly documents his foibles and reflects deeply on how his life experiences prepared him for his risk-embracing cryptocurrency adventure. The tone of the book is somewhat inconsistent, however, as it ranges from buoyantly irreverent to smugly knowing. The author also savagely caricatures his former colleagues, referring to them by nicknames, such as “Fuckface” and “Kermit,” presumably in order to protect their identities, but this also serves to deepen his condemnation of them. Overall, though, this book offers an edifying look into a mysterious world that promises momentous transformation.
A highly dramatic but lucid introduction to the murky world of cryptocurrency.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2019
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 201
Publisher: Zealot Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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