The Wolf of Wall Street (Hardcover)

by Jordan Belfort (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From 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. (Oct. 2)
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Review
A cocky bad boy of finance recalls, in much detail and scabrous language, his nasty career as a master of his own universe.At a young age, in an industry with many precocious bandits, Belfort ran a Long Island - based brokerage with the deceptively WASP-y name of Stratton Oakmont. It was a bucket shop habitually engaged in crooked underwritings. Its persuasive boss was a stock manipulator and tax dodger; he details the stock kiting, share parking, money laundering and customer swindles. Many millions poured in, and cash brought with it excess upon excess. Along with compliant women and copious drugs, there were multiple mansions, many servants, aircraft, yachts and, for all the guys on the trading floor, trophy wives. Among his under-the-table and beneath-the-sheets activities, the author's most imperative seemed to be sex and dope-taking, despite his professed abiding love for his (now ex) wife and kids. Belfort's portrait of his family is vivid, as is his depiction of the merry cast of supporting players: sweet Aunt Patricia, a Swiss forger, evil garmentos, Mad Max (Stratton's CFO and his father). The melodrama covers coke snorting, Quaalude eating, kinky sex, violence, car wrecks, even a sick child and a storm at sea. "A cautionary tale," the author calls it. It is crass, certainly, and vulgar - and a hell of a read. Belfort displays dirty writing skills many basis points above his tricky ilk. His chronicle ends with his arrest for fraud. Now, with 22 months in the slammer behind him, he's working on his next book.Entertaining as pulp fiction, real as a federal indictment. (Kirkus Reviews) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 528 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (September 25, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553805460
• ISBN-13: 978-0553805468
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (84 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #174,966 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Well, At Least He Loves Himself, November 25, 2007

By	R. Spell "raspell" (Memphis, TN USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I love business/Wall Street books as I work at a regional investment firm. Also, the movie "Boiler Room" is one of my favorites and supposedly this is the firm it was modeled after. Unfortunately this guy tries to be too cute in his writing style and he's not nearly as funny as he thinks. He wants to impress you with his drug use and his wild life and also manages to get in quite a bit about his business. BTW, he does appear to be very talented as a chop shop owner/manager and just from a few tidbits you can see he knows the aggressive sales techniques necessary to be successful. But this book is confusing, boring, too long, and has very few interesting points. The author tells you what he wants you to hear, then gets to the end of the story and runs out of time without completing the full story. For example, after going on forever about his beautiful wife and drug use, after rehab they divorce. But instead of completing the story for full disclosure it's about two pages with no mention of fault or what really happened.

The synopsis of this book is exactly the type book I like: true stories of Wall Street. But this book is hugely disappointing and not worth the time. I'd take a pass on this one as it's not worth the time invested.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Black sheep in wolf's clothing, January 20, 2008

By	bookaholic - See all my reviews

I'm pretty well informed of what goes on in the financial world, so when I heard about this book, I wondered why I'd never heard of Jordan Belfort, Stratton Oakmont, or the "Wolf of Wall Street."

The first few chapters told me why: Belfort, whose ego is inversely proportional to his height (why is it always that the shortest guys have such delusions of grandiosity?), has appointed himself The Wolf of Wall Street, even though the company he operated was a blip in the map of the financial world. The firm wasn't even based in Manhattan and, sorry but you can't be the Wolf (or anything else for that matter) of Wall Street when you are working in a Long Island town most successful Wall Streeters wouldn't step in unless forced at gunpoint. Henry Kravis as the Wolf of Wall Street? That I buy. Jordan Belfort? Give me a break. That's like calling a used-car salesman the Wolf of Detroit.

71 of 86 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't bother, October 8, 2007

By	I was there (NY, NY) - See all my reviews

Did anyone else lose count of how many times Mr. Belfort used the phrase "luscious loamy loins" in this book? The Duchess must have had some interesting private parts if they were indeed "loamy". Hmm.

This memoir is not worth reading unless you were an employee of Stratton Oakmont or had some kind of connection to the people mentioned in it. The book is mostly about Jordan's careless spending, complete disregard for others, and raging drug and prostitute habits. You don't even get the sense that he's remorseful about any of it in the end: it rather seems that Mr. Belfort is boasting about his bad behavior.

The beginning of the book details the rise of Jordan in the broker business and does have some interesting chapters. Then it takes a nose dive and turns into an ego trip down Mr. Belfort's memory lane. It gets painfully boring and quite unbelievable at points: Jordan describes miracle medical cures, his superhuman resistance to deadly doses of various drugs, ridiculous tawdry conversations... It's full of way-out-there stuff that makes you think maybe Jordan imagined these things in his drug-addled mind. Even if some of it is true, it's not very interesting and mostly I just felt embarassed for him and the people whose nasty habits he reveals in this tale.

Save your money, Jordan is a conceited bore.