Ugly Americans

Another extraordinary real-life thriller from the author of the bestselling book and inspiration for the film 21, Bringing Down the House. Ugly Americans is a true story of money, greed and risk set in the Wild East of 1990s Japan.

In the early '90's, dozens of elite young American graduates made their fortunes in hedge funds in the Far East, beating the Japanese at their own game, riding the crashing waves of the Asian markets and winning. This title tells the story of these people.

The true story of the Ivy League hedge fund cowboys who gambled with the dangerously high stakes of the Asian stock market.

John Malcolm, high school football hero and Princeton graduate made his millions back in the early '90s, a time when dozens of elite young American graduates made their fortunes in hedge funds in the Far East, beating the Japanese at their own game, riding the crashing waves of the Asian stock markets, gambling at impossibly high stakes and winning. Failure meant not only bankruptcy and disgrace à la Nick Leeson, but potentially even death - at the hands of the Japanese Yakuza: one of the world's most notoriously violent organised crime syndicates.

Ugly Americans tells Malcolm's story, and that of others like him, in a high octane book, filled with glamour, money and the dangers these incur, this true story is a cross between Mezrich's own best-selling Bringing Down the House and Michael Lewis' Liar's Poker.