The Wolf of Wall Street
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4.3 • 498 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Now a major motion picture starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
'an incredible - and strangely compelling - story of shocking greed and power' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
By day he made thousands of dollars a minute. By night he spent it as fast as he could on drugs, sex and travel.
From the binge that sank a 17-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. Here, in his own inimitable words, is the story of the ill-fated genius they called 'The Wolf of Wall Street'.
In the 1990s, Jordan Belfort 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.
In this astounding and hilarious tell-all autobiography, Belfort narrates a story of greed, power and excess no one could invent – 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.
Also by Jordan Belfort is CATCHING THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, which tells of what happened next...
Praise for CATCHING THE WOLF OF WALL STREET:
'spankingly candid insights into sex, drugs and rocky stockbroking' GQ AUSTRALIA
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
It’s 3 a.m., and stockbroker Jordan Belfort is flying his own helicopter over Manhattan, so high on Quaaludes he can barely form a sentence. How did he go from being a lowly seafood salesman to this, all before the age of 31? Belfort’s larger-than-life personality saturates every page of this memoir about his meteoric Wall Street success, his life of extreme vice, and his stunning downfall. He's cocky, self-deprecating and hilarious, mixing ride-it-'til-the-wheels-fall-off gonzo reporting with unvarnished introspection. It’s easy to see why Martin Scorsese brought The Wolf of Wall Street to the big screen.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Belfort, who founded one of the first and largest "chop shop" brokerage firms in 1987, was banned from the securities business for life by 1994, and later went to jail for fraud and money-laundering, delivers a memoir that reads like fiction. It covers his decade of success with straightforward accounts of how he worked with managers of obscure companies to acquire large amounts of stock with minimal public disclosure, then pumped up the price and sold it, so he and the insiders made large profits while public investors usually lost. Profits were laundered through purchase of legitimate businesses and cash deposits in Swiss banks. There is only brief mention of Belfort's life before Wall Street or events since 1997. The book's main topic is the vast amount of sex, drugs and risky physical behavior Belfort managed to survive. As might be expected in the autobiography of a veteran con man with movie rights already sold, it's hard to know how much to believe. The story is told mostly in dialogue, with allegedly contemporaneous mental asides by the author, reported verbatim. But it reports only surface events, never revealing what motivates Belfort or any of the other characters.
Customer Reviews
Great book
The only reason I don't give it 5/5 is because I hate that Belfort makes me like him when he hurt so many people. I've also been a drug addict so I know what it's like to be a whole other person that's not yourself. Thing is, he doesn't take enough ownership of the pain he caused people he didn't know.
All up, he writes well. Funny and lovable character who from an outsider pov is easily forgiven.
Good read
It's a big book that drags along a bit in parts and unfortunately (sanely) I found myself hating the protagonist for the better part of the book, I'd say until the epilogue and acknowledgements, however I still enjoyed the read. Will buy the second book if it's under $10
Good read, no hero
A very good read, well worth it. If you have already seen the movie then just battle few the first few chapters as its identical to the movie. Jordan Belfort is no hero though, and if your reading this expecting to idealise the man you will be disappointed. All in all an interesting read and I would recommend to others.