American Sucker

Rating:
Summary: Greed and Envy
Review: It's hard to feel sympathetic for someone who writes for the New Yorker and owns a seven room apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Too bad he became obsessed with the stock market; well, as he admits, lots of ordinary Americans lost more than he did. This is a story of shallow values, false friends, and calculated social climbing. Denby collected people with celebrity, charisma and most important, wealth. No wonder they betrayed him. He wasn't looking for good people, he was looking for glamorous people to use to enhance his social (and financial) standing. Surprise - they used him instead. It's an old story. Can't feel sorry for him, I'm afraid. There are a lot of dissatisfied people out there, people who will never have enough, and whose accomplishments will never give them happiness. Denby is one, his novelist wife who left their marriage for unspecified reasons, is another. I downed this book in one gulp and returned it to the library the next day. Don't buy it. Do read it, and in conjunction with On Paradise Drive by David Brooks. It's the antidote to much happy theorizing about following one's American bliss.

Rating:
Summary: And we should care why?
Review: Oh, because he's a film critic, for the New Yorker no less, which means he's important and MUST have something insightful to say. (At least Joel Siegel knows his place...) Denby doesn't, which is sad, because a real artist would have fashioned great material out of all this. Unfortunately, D.'s just a schmuck, this book is a bad PR campaign, and when Denby's not trying to be funny (like a very pale Woody Allen), he's being maudlin in a pompous, self-denigrating way that reminds me of Nietzsche's aphorism: "He who despises himself nevertheless respects himself as one who despises." This is highbrow junk for jetsetters and dandies.

Rating:
Summary: Stream of Consciousness
Review: Stream of Consciousness

This story isn't about losing money investing (speculating?) in the stock market. It isn't about getting caught up in a bubble, despite the writer's constant recognition of that very fact. It is more about a guy struggling to cope with becoming a middle-aged divorcee. As the Epilogue tells us, his financial destruction was his way of throwing a temper tantrum. He was being careless and bold for the first time in his life, and he chose the financial markets as his medium.

Although this is an interesting story, I think the marketing of this book - thanks in large part to the many reviews - paint the wrong story. This is not an interesting book about investing, it more human than that. Perhaps that is one of its greatest strengths.

Do you think Mr. Denby is splitting his royalties with his wife? He wasted away hundreds of thousands of dollars of her wealth. What a grounded person she must be to only respond with "the market will come back." I wish my wife was that understanding.

Rating:
Summary: You are the sucker if you buy this book!
Review: The title of this book should be "An American sucker if you buy this book". This book is about nothing, a failed marriage without explanation and fail trades not explained. If you need to spend money to learn that Enron was full of crooks, then you are a sucker. Save your money people.

Rating:
Summary: This book should have been limited to a New Yorker Article
Review: This book goes no where fast. The author does not make the reader feel any pity or even identify with himself. The book is similar to the Cather in the Rye's writing style, where you simply get a stream of thoughts from the author. The problem here is, the thoughts are real and you won't care.

Rating:
Summary: Another view of a man's depression
Review: This is a telling book about men and depression. Many many men can identify with his response to his wife leaving their marriage and Denby's responses: depression, stabbing at a big financial win in life, wanting to hold on to the homeplace, caring for the children alone... It is not a story often told or read. Unfortunately, it will probably not be well read, I think, because of our culture's need to ignore men's emotional problems unless they become violent.

Rating:
Summary: Thought Provoking
Review: This is a very important book describing the 90s, a decade of vast growth of wealth in America. But our lifestyles also changed drastically with cell phones (anyone remember large 1989 cell phones), the Internet, and Personal Computing Devices. These technology advances pushed many people into the stock market after watching the vast fortunes made by normal people. It seemed like everyone felt they were a market expert.

So what is a devout liberal to do when he is in the throes of a painful divorce that will significantly change his lifestyle? Put on his capitalist hat and joining the rat race to become a millionaire from stock gains. And for a while it works. But later, he learns the hard lessons of the market and what it can do to the least informed.

In addition to the blind rush to join the stock market craze, other interesting subjects include this liberal's internal conflict with his capitalist adventure, the emotional conflict of his divorce and the effect on his family. Denby also was able to access many of the stock market stars because he was a journalist. The CEO of IMCLONE who is convicted of insider trading is featured as is interviews with Henry Blodgett, the Internet Analyst who was interviewed while the author played the market. This is particularly interesting to hear quotes supporting the market as it becomes clear it has been overvalued.

Ten years from now people can read this book to reconstruct a feel of living in the 90s, stock market gains and harried lifestyles. While I work in the finance business, even if you have NO interest in the stock market, this book will be of interest to explore the mental anguish of divorce and the effect on the family. I strongly recommend this book to stock market enthusiasts, individuals with interest in recent history, people interested in the impact of divorce, and a movie enthusiast as the author is a very well-known movie critic.

Rating:
Summary: an interesting look at a self-absorbed, humbled investor
Review: This is an interesting look at a self-absorbed and humbled investor who fell for the allure of the markets and the get-rich-quick mantra of the late 90s. It chronicles, cliched though it is, the rise and fall of a man's portfolio, along with his ties to some of the more notorious corproate crooks of the past few years. It is worth 4 stars if only because the author is remarkably candid about his greed, his desire for quick riches through the market, and his admiration and jealousy of the 'rock star' CEO embodied in Sam Waksal.

There's not much original in here, or interesting beyond that rare candor. Candor, however, is a rare quality in writers, and such makes this an interesting trifle of a read.

Rating:
Summary: Not Just A Financial Story....A Human Story
Review: This is not just a book about finance, though at first glance it would be easy enough to mistake it for one. The clever cover design resembles a stock ticker, and if you dip into the opening pages, you will learn that this story begins with author and critic David Denby's goal of making a million dollars. Denby wasn't seeking wealth merely for the sake of wealth; at the beginning of 2000, his wife had told him their marriage was at an end. Denby became obsessed with the idea of holding onto the seven-bedroom Manhattan apartment he had shared with her and their two sons. If only he could ride the seemingly steadily rising tide of the stock market and make that million, he could buy out her share and preserve their home.

Denby is a long-time film critic (New York magazine, The New Yorker) and author of "Great Books," a passionate account of his return to college in middle age to rediscover the seminal works of western civilization. Although ostensibly about his financial quest, the reader slowly discovers this book is really about his quest to rebuild and maintain a meaningful life. He comes under the spell of New Economy stars who would fall mightily within a couple of years, including ImClone founder Sam Waksal and Merrill Lynch Internet analyst Henry Blodget. Denby adopted a course he knew was risky (though how risky, he didn't realize) by focusing on new technologies such as ImClone's cancer drugs and the firms producing the tools that would usher in the true Information Superhighway, with the entire contents of the Library of Congress transmitted to the other side of the globe at light speed. Denby works to learn as much as he can about those to whom he has entrusted his money and dreams, and the more he learns, the more aware he becomes of the betrayal that eventually wiped out the savings and shattered the faith of tens, if not hundreds of thousands.

Throughout, Denby is engagingly, openly frank about the impacts of the financial roller coaster ride he experienced. At one time or another, his sleep habits, his bowel habits and his sex life suffered. But what seemed to have been at stake most of all was his sense of self and the realization of the things that really matter in life, including making the most of the limited days we are given. His narrative closes with a hopeful reaffirmation of these core values.

This is passionate, vivid book with lessons for us all.--William C. Hall

Rating:
Summary: What has Denby learned? Nothing!
Review: To hear this author go on countless talk shows hawking this shallow bubble of a book is depressing. "American Sucker" is about an extremely accomplished and educated man who surrounds himself with Manhattan sycophants and billionaires, and thinks that if he hangs out with them, he can become one of them. It is hard to muster any pity over his extreme immaturity (at age 59) in pouring his savings into the Gen X internet bubble. Despite his divorce, Denby.... has always been and is still... married to an empty pursuit of celebrity, Wall Street, Hollywood, and surface glitz. Like Janet Jackson baring her breast for record sales, Denby pulls out "depression" and name dropping in an attempt to create a best seller.