Ugly Americans is the true story of John Malcolm, a Princeton graduate who traveled halfway around the world in search of the American dream and pulled off a trade that could be described as the biggest deal in the history of the financial markets.
Without speaking a word of Japanese, with barely a penny in his pocket, Malcolm was thrown into the bizarre life of an ex-pat trader. Surrounded by characters ripped right out of a Hollywood thriller, he quickly learned how to survive in a cutthroat world - at the feet of the biggest players the markets have ever known.
Malcolm was first an assistant trading huge positions for Nick Leeson, the rogue trader who brought down Barings Bank - the oldest in England. He was the right-hand man to an enigmatic and brilliant hedge-fund cowboy, Dean Carney, and grew into one of the biggest derivatives traders in all of Asia. Along the way, Malcolm fell in love with the daughter of a Yakuza gangster, built a vast fortune out of thin air, and came head to head with violent Japanese mobsters. Malcolm and his twentysomething, Ivy League -schooled colleagues rode the crashing waves of the Asian markets during the mid-to-late 1990s, culminating in a single deal the likes of which had never been seen before, or since.
A real-life mixture of Liar’s Poker and Wall Street, brimming with intense action, romance, underground sex, vivid locales, and exotic characters, Ugly Americans is the untold, true story that will rock the financial community and redefine an era.
The author reads his account of American stock traders taking a wild ride on the Japanese market. Mezrich gives a clear reading with little emotion. Instead he relies on his own descriptions to convey the somersaulting feelings of John Malcolm as he is introduced to the corrupt and sexually deviant underworld of Tokyo. Mezrich doesn't attempt accents for the Japanese and British characters Malcolm encounters on his way to one of the biggest deals in financial history. Characterized largely as a befuddled innocent, Malcolm barely escapes with his life before departing Japan with his newfound love and wealth. J.J.B. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine
...
