JERSEY DIRTY

Ricciardi’s memoir relates the story of a scrappy kid from New Jersey who made good.

The author was taught early on the value of hard work—his father started as an apprentice bricklayer and later supervised the construction of the Giants Stadium—and of education. He attended a Catholic boys’ prep school, and then, in 1974, Georgetown University; eventually, he went to Harvard Business School, and wherever he went, he was fiercely proud of his Jersey roots. He later pursued a career on Wall Street with Salomon Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Citicorp, and Kidder Peabody. Along the way, he had mixed success with some private ventures, but he always bounced back. Readers learn of his ferocious competitive streak in his account of rowing for Georgetown, in which he pushed his endurance to the limit. He recounts his love life, his strong friendships, his partying, and other adventures, such as bicycling from New Jersey to Florida, right up to the present; now, he’s “less than a car lease away from turning seventy” with a solid marriage and adult children in rewarding careers. Overall, Ricciardi is a lively writer who enjoys wordplay (“I went from having the Midas touch to the Minus touch”) and is perhaps overly fond of puns; in a story of losing a bet, for example, he describes himself as “Pennywise, now Poundedfoolish.” Readers also get brief accounts of major historical events, such as the 9/11 attacks, which the family watched, horrified, from their home across the Hudson River, and the economic crash of 2008. He also mentions health crises, including a diagnosis of an unspecified cognitive impairment. He drops a few famous names and offers perhaps a few too many anecdotes; however, he paints a clear portrait of a man who celebrates his friends, takes betrayal hard, and has a keen eye for drawing strength and life lessons from his experiences—and he still lives in his beloved Garden State.

An entertaining and inspiring account of a life well lived.