Synopsis:
By day he made thousands of dollars a minute. By night he spent it as fast as he could, on drugs, sex, and international globe-trotting. From the binge that sank a 170-foot motor yacht, crashed a Gulfstream jet, and ran up a $700,000 hotel tab, to the wife and kids who waited for him at home, and the fast-talking, hard-partying young stockbrokers who called him king and did his bidding, here, in his own inimitable words, is the story of the ill-fated genius they called...
In the 1990s Jordan Belfort, former kingpin of the notorious investment firm Stratton Oakmont, became one of the most infamous names in American finance: a brilliant, conniving stock-chopper who led his merry mob on a wild ride out of the canyons of Wall Street and into a massive office on Long Island. Now, in this astounding and hilarious tell-all autobiography, Belfort narrates a story of greed, power, and excess no one could invent.
Reputedly the prototype for the film Boiler Room, Stratton Oakmont turned microcap investing into a wickedly lucrative game as Belfort’s hyped-up, coked-out brokers browbeat clients into stock buys that were guaranteed to earn obscene profits–for the house. But an insatiable appetite for debauchery, questionable tactics, and a fateful partnership with a breakout shoe designer named Steve Madden would land Belfort on both sides of the law and into a harrowing darkness all his own.
From the stormy relationship Belfort shared with his model-wife as they ran a madcap household that included two young children, a full-time staff of twenty-two, a pair of bodyguards, and hidden cameras everywhere—even as the SEC and FBI zeroed in on them—to the unbridled hedonism of his office life, here is the extraordinary story of an ordinary guy who went from hustling Italian ices at sixteen to making hundreds of millions. Until it all came crashing down...
Review:
A cocky bad boy of finance recalls ... [his] career as a master of his own universe .... A hell of a read. (Kirkus)
A memoir that reads like fiction ... [about a] vast amount of sex, drugs and risky physical behavior Belfort managed to survive. (Publishers Weekly)
Reads like a cross between Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities and Scorsese's Goodfellas .... Laugh-out-loud funny (The Sunday Times)
For those not completely familiar with Wall Street, this is an important read. Think of it as a tour of the sort of underbelly of the financial market scene, the dark side of which, in some form, is always out there. For those more experienced, this can be, plain and simple, a fun read. (TheStreet.com)
Belfort's narrative is at once gleefully crass and terribly sad. By the time he gets arrested by FBI agents en route to buy his daughter a Rugrats video, you actually feel for the guy. (Rolling Stone)
This book reads like The Financial World presented by Ozzy Osbourne . . . One reads a book like this for tales of excess, and Belfort certainly delivers, to the point where you long for a night in with Dad's Army and something eggy on a plate. (Mail on Sunday)
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