Rating: 
Summary: A True Confession
Review: Jim Cramer opens the window into a trader's mindset. He truely is a street addict. A great read for any investor. Anyone who follows Cramer needs to read this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Think I will trade this book for another
Review: Cramer's writing is okay in the book, but what he has to say was not very interesting. He spends a great deal of time disecting the past and most of what he talks about is more suitable for a magazine article than a book. He talks about certain stocks and trades that happended long ago and when these trades took place they might have had some importance to Cramer's story, but that was a long time ago and the material really comes off flat and stale. On a personal note, I have to say that the publisher has done Cramer and the reader a great disservice by putting the most unflattering picture of Cramer on the cover. I mean, if you want to judge a book by its cover you might use this one to scare away readers.A picture also says a thousand words, but I have only two words to say about this book: No thanks!
Rating:
Summary: Compelling Story/Worthwhile Market Insight
Review: Jim Cramer's "Confessions" is at once a compelling personal saga that makes fascinating reading and an insightful entree to the trading methodology of an aggressive hedge fund. Mr. Cramer is a remarkable character: self effacing, yet self aggrandizing at the same time. The story of the near failure of his hedge fund, saved only by a timely trading cameo by Mr. Cramer's wife (the Trading Goddess), is riveting. Jim Cramer's considerable bluster and tenacity are pale shadows of his wife's skill, experience and strength. "Cold blooded" does not do her justice -- she must have liquid nitrogen at the core of her circulation.Read it!
Rating:
Summary: Revealing
Review: A hard hitting, insightful read on what makes Cramer tick. As much an autobiography as it is a window into the hedge fund industry. He exposes his mistakes as well as his successes. Thoroughly entertaining, very difficult to put down. Being from the same industry I found myself living vicariously through him.
Rating:
Summary: Like it or not, the lighting rod lives !
Review: Once again James Cramer allows us a look at a life he certainly loves living. From the days as a kid reviewing the stock quotes to his decision to give up the money management game....From the troubling first days of Thestreet.com to it's impending triumph, you get a honest, open ride right along side one of the best. No one who is serious about the ways of Wallstreet..... who has the slightest interest in the workings of the press can afford to miss it..It's a fast read, it's a great trip....I'm going to read it again ! PS. For a few bucks you can watch it all play out on a daily bases.
Rating:
Summary: To Trader's Hell and Back, And Lived to Tell About It
Review: James J. Cramer (Cramer & Berkowitz, TheStreet.com, CNBC's Kudlow & Cramer) takes you to a stock market trader's hell and back in "Confessions of a Street Addict." The analogy of investing being a war zone was coined at least 70 years ago with Gerald Loeb's "The Battle For Investment Survival" (1935). And you can't make it through the pages of this book without realizing what a battlefield it is. No book comes closer to approximating the giddy highs or heart-wrenching lows that trading puts a person through. The glory of victory and the agony of defeat are never more real as Cramer bares the trader's soul.
The book reads almost like an adventure novel - ricocheting from one crisis to another, each scene set up with hero and villain, with Cramer not always coming out on top. He starts you off with his basic biography, of being a teenage stock picker (paper trader), of his march through journalism (which shows in his writing), of Harvard Law, and eventually to Wall Street's most intense stage of conflict - the hedge fund.
The beauty of this book is that you get the fly-in-the-brain's view of how traders think (or don't think when their emotions get the best of them), how Wall Street really works, and how it all congeals together to produce the daily statistics. You are there as Cramer learns the ropes from his wife-to-be, The Trading Goddess, Karen Backfish. You sweat with him as he does deals, takes chances, high-fives victories, and crashes so low with failures he could probably seep out under the door unnoticed. A lot of the things you learn run counter to what the official Wall Street line wants you to know - the inside story of the blow-up of LTCM, and how analysts, brokers, and fund managers continually jostle each other for positions of power and influence, and profit.
The most interesting part of the book is being there as the Internet springs to life in the mid 90s - the wild enthusiasm and the unbelievable cluelessness that much of the Internet was built upon. But it was built, and it was built by the types of people Cramer came in contact with regularly - half geniuses, half dreamers, and half con men. And you're right - most of the time, it didn't add up.
Cramer, in addition to being a market manic, had a populist's belief that the little guys should have the same access to what the big guys had, and that the technology was now here to make it possible. TheStreet.com was the result. It's still here - one of the survivors, as is Cramer.
A lot of the book is a sad commentary on how far an addiction can twist your life around. Cramer chastises himself for talking stocks beside his mother's deathbed, his tumultuous relationship with his benefactor Marty Peretz, the destruction of computers and equipment and abuse of employees when the market went against him, and how he deserted his family for the sake of "the game." He simply couldn't stand to lose. In the end, he had enough common sense (though he makes it clear that his wife was always the steady rock in their relationship) to quit while he was ahead.
I particularly enjoyed Cramer's honesty at the extremes, (the emotional soul-wrenching limit) especially the bottom in 1998 (when he caved in - "sell everything, the market's gonna' crash - it's the end of the world"), and at the top in 2000 (when he publicly announced Internet stocks would live forever), and Cramer's final tantrum with the market on 22 Nov 00 when he met his match in a long Brocade position (I quit!). Each time, Cramer was so sure he was right, nobody or thing could dissuade him of his fallibility. But each time, it was his wife (1998), or reality (2000), or, finally, his own cathartic understanding of himself that led him back to humility...and humanity.
Given his personality, one must believe that if he had taken up stamp collecting, little would have changed, and it would be the philatelic world which would have had to live through Cramer's manias. Summing up his career, Cramer quotes his wife's 1998 pronouncement as they recovered from nearly panicking out at the bottom: "It's better to be lucky than to be good." However, with the success Backfish and Cramer had, I expect their luck was more of the variety of being smart enough to be at the right place at the right time than that of a pure roll of the dice. Good traders aren't just lucky, they're good. And Cramer was good, even if he was an addict.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding
Review: All the back and forth on this book is amazing. Jim Cramer rocks! Don't believe all the stupid negative reviews. Read this book and learn something.
Rating:
Summary: Astounding
Review: Wow. I have to say that, when I picked up this book, I was not prepared for the profound impression it would make on me. I have followed Cramer for a short time now, as long as I have followed the stock market, and have been very impressed by what strikes me as his candidness and apparent sincerity. Cramer, unlike so many Wall Street bigshots (not that Cramer is a bigshot), seems to genuinely care about those he sets out to advise, and this is what drew me to his book.
First, let me say that Cramer is a remarkably good writer, and recounts his story in such an intense, exciting, yet compelling way that I don't see how anyone could not be drawn in by this book, no matter how little interest they have in Wall Street. Second, while I wouldn't call Cramer an egomaniac (as others have done), I certainly agree that the man has a lot of self-confidence (that's what makes him such a good investor), and that confidence certainly comes through in this book.
Finally, Cramer is so brutally honest in this book (I've heard him say many times on the radio that he's embarrassed of how open he was) that you cannot help but like the guy. He did some horrible things in his quest to rise to the top of the financial world, but he admits what he did and takes the blame for all of his misdeeds. This is a great book from a fascinating man, and one which paints a very clear picture of the price men often pay for success on Wall Street.
Rating: 
Summary: wonderful
Review: love the book esp. the beginning,
it is so funny and insightful of
wall street, some chapters are boring
but overall, great book for anyone who
wants to laugh and know a little
about the street
Rating:
Summary: Honest, blunt
Review: You may not like Jim Cramer--I find him a little abrasive--but you can't deny that he is a riveting and excellent writer. This book is one of the best inside accounts that has come out on Wall Street, and by far the best book ever to come out on the hedge fund biz.
What a refreshing change from all the puffery that comes out on Wall Street! Contrast this with other flaccid, mealy mouthed books that come out on other moguls, and you can see the difference. Instead of portraying himself as "philanthropist" or other self-indulgent crap that we get in other books of this kind, we have an honest, warts and all portrayal. The shame is that a lot of the negative reviews on this book are a result of its chief asset, which is its honesty.
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