An eye-opening window onto Wall Street’s destructive culture of unchecked hubris and a harrowing thrill ride into the...
The sordid saga of debauched Wall Street hedge fund manager Sam Israel and how he lost more than $100 million—and most of his sanity.
At one time, Israel could do no wrong. He had the magic touch on Wall Street, seemingly able to turn anything he touched into gold. Never mind that his financial prowess as a trader stemmed from a steady font of insider trading information provided by some of the most conniving players in the stock market. When Israel’s fraud was discovered and his fund inevitably collapsed, he fell prey to even more pernicious con men than himself. Blinded by the promise of billions of dollars and an escape hatch from his sinking firm, Israel decided to roll the dice and bet on the wild schemes of Robert Booth Nichols, an eccentric figure claiming to be an ex-CIA asset. Nichols promised Israel entrance into the dangerous world of international high finance known as the “Shadow Market,” a secretive world where the strapped financier could recoup his losses and even amass a new fortune. However, the Shadow Market didn’t really exist. Or did it? The line between fact and fantasy becomes elusive in the second half of this mind-bending yarn, but Lawson (co-author: Brotherhoods: The True Story of Two Cops Who Murdered for the Mafia, 2006) somehow manages to make sense of it all. He provides a penetratingly comprehensive profile of a crooked trader run amok, and he nimbly traverses the labyrinthine depths of a worldwide banking con that managed to involve looted Federal Reserve notes and the JFK assassination. The author is sympathetic to Israel—at least he, unlike Bernie Madoff, tried to pay back those he swindled—but he doesn't sugarcoat his crimes.
An eye-opening window onto Wall Street’s destructive culture of unchecked hubris and a harrowing thrill ride into the unraveling mind of a desperate operator.Pub Date: July 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-71607-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Career and business advice for the hashtag generation. For all its self-absorption, this book doesn’t offer much reflection...
A Dumpster diver–turned-CEO details her rise to success and her business philosophy.
In this memoir/business book, Amoruso, CEO of the Internet clothing store Nasty Gal, offers advice to young women entrepreneurs who seek an alternative path to fame and fortune. Beginning with a lengthy discussion of her suburban childhood and rebellious teen years, the author describes her experiences living hand to mouth, hitchhiking, shoplifting and dropping out of school. Her life turned around when, bored at work one night, she decided to sell a few pieces of vintage clothing on eBay. Fast-forward seven years, and Amoruso was running a $100 million company with 350 employees. While her success is admirable, most of her advice is based on her own limited experiences and includes such hackneyed lines as, “When you accept yourself, it’s surprising how much other people will accept you, too.” At more than 200 pages, the book is overlong, and much of what the author discusses could be summarized in a few tweets. In fact, much of it probably has been: One of the most interesting sections in the book is her description of how she uses social media. Amoruso has a spiritual side, as well, and she describes her belief in “chaos magic” and “sigils,” a kind of wishful-thinking exercise involving abstract words. The book also includes sidebars featuring guest “girlbosses” (bloggers, Internet entrepreneurs) who share equally clichéd suggestions for business success. Some of the guidance Amoruso offers for interviews (don’t dress like you’re going to a nightclub), getting fired (don’t call anyone names) and finding your fashion style (be careful which trends you follow) will be helpful to her readers, including the sage advice, “You’re not special.”
Career and business advice for the hashtag generation. For all its self-absorption, this book doesn’t offer much reflection or insight.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-399-16927-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
"There's got to be something wrong with somebody who'd do a thing like that." This is Perry Edward Smith, talking about himself. "Deal me out, baby...I'm a normal." This is Richard Eugene Hickock, talking about himself. They're as sick a pair as Leopold and Loeb and together they killed a mother, a father, a pretty 17-year-old and her brother, none of whom they'd seen before, in cold blood. A couple of days before they had bought a 100 foot rope to garrote them—enough for ten people if necessary. This small pogrom took place in Holcomb, Kansas, a lonesome town on a flat, limitless landscape: a depot, a store, a cafe, two filling stations, 270 inhabitants. The natives refer to it as "out there." It occurred in 1959 and Capote has spent five years, almost all of the time which has since elapsed, in following up this crime which made no sense, had no motive, left few clues—just a footprint and a remembered conversation. Capote's alternating dossier Shifts from the victims, the Clutter family, to the boy who had loved Nancy Clutter, and her best friend, to the neighbors, and to the recently paroled perpetrators: Perry, with a stunted child's legs and a changeling's face, and Dick, who had one squinting eye but a "smile that works." They had been cellmates at the Kansas State Penitentiary where another prisoner had told them about the Clutters—he'd hired out once on Mr. Clutter's farm and thought that Mr. Clutter was perhaps rich. And this is the lead which finally broke the case after Perry and Dick had drifted down to Mexico, back to the midwest, been seen in Kansas City, and were finally picked up in Las Vegas. The last, even more terrible chapters, deal with their confessions, the law man who wanted to see them hanged, back to back, the trial begun in 1960, the post-ponements of the execution, and finally the walk to "The Corner" and Perry's soft-spoken words—"It would be meaningless to apologize for what I did. Even inappropriate. But I do. I apologize." It's a magnificent job—this American tragedy—with the incomparable Capote touches throughout. There may never have been a perfect crime, but if there ever has been a perfect reconstruction of one, surely this must be it.
Pub Date: Jan. 7, 1965
ISBN: 0375507906
Page Count: 343
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1965
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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