American Sucker

by David Denby

Book Overview

Denby's writing has made him one of the country's most sought-after critics, and "Great Books" was a "New York Times" bestseller. Here Denby tells the story not only of his own decline, but of his new friends Sam Waksal, indicted founder of ImClone, and Henry Blodgett, disgraced analyst for Merrill Lynch.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316192945
• ISBN13: 9780316192941
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: Little Brown and Company
• Length: 337 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.3" x 9.6"
• Age Range: 13 years and up

Customer Reviews

Ignore the naysayers. This book is great!

I wish I had more time to read great stuff like this. Denby's writing is extremely fine. His style is flawless. Just buy this book.

Cautionary Tale For The Investor

Excellent, lively well written, American Sucker is a cautionary tale for the individual investor. Denby gives his inside account of the latest investment bubble...the tech craze of the 1990's. Along the way Denby described in sordid detail all the angst and pathos the he experienced in his private life ( his divorce, 9/11 etc.) He wants to buy out his wife for the right to own the family apartment. This is his motivating factor to get rich. Meanwhile, we are introduced to the cast of "charlatans": Sam Waksal and Henry Blodgett. Through his greed and gullibity, Denby "loses" 1 million dollars in paper "losses". But wait, are Waksal and Blodgett really villains, or are they scapegoats vilified and lynched by an angry mob of greedy and gullible investors?Denby ignored all the basic tenets of investing: he failed to diversify, he bought on emotion, he failed to learn about the companies and the sector before investing, he relied too much on the advise of the insiders. In addition, Denby ignored the advice of the New Yorker's business writer and he ignored the warnings of Alan Greenspan. Denby even admits that he was overtaken by irrational exuberance. Yet he stilled blamed Waksal and Blodgett for his losses. Rather than blame Waksal and Blodgett, Denby should blame the person he sees in the mirror every morning.Novice investors are warned ad nauseum about previous bubbles in history ( Tulip Craze, the Nifty Fifty). Add to that the tech craze of the '90's. For this reason American Sucker should be part of every investor's library.

Thought Provoking

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.

Worth the read for the issues it raises

You instinctively know that "The New Yorker" movie critic David Denby ought to be able to tell a good story, and that the author of "The Great Books" ought to be able to weave revelation into the most daunting of experiences. Add all this together and we ought to get a rocking good ride through the rise and fall of NASDAQ 5000 as seen from main street's point of view. And we do.Needing money to buy his soon-to-be-ex-wife out of their Upper West Side apartment, Denby loaded up on NASDAQ mutual funds in Oct 99 and NASDAQ stocks in Jan 00. The rest is history, as they say. But the process (losing $800,000 from March 2000 to October 2002) is what makes this heart warming tale of decline and fall, and redemption, well worth the read. Taken from an investor's viewpoint, the book should have been entitled "How to lose money doing everything an investor ought not to do." (1) Don't go into the stock market with a goal of making 1 million dollars in one year - if you want to gamble, go to Vegas. At least you get free drinks. (2) Don't ignore history - every possible danger sign was flashing by the end of 1999, a fact Denby acknowledged. (3) Don't attend high-tech investment dog-and-pony shows and blindly step in the manure spread around by the hosts. (4) Don't be afraid to take responsibility for your own investments. Putting the onus off on somebody else to escape the ultimate decisions is a fool's game. (5) Don't give way to emotionalism, especially when your heart doesn't understand what your head is saying. All of this is instructive, but the true gems come to light when Denby goes searching for the reasons why. Why did he do what he did, and why did the investment process treat him so shabbily? Up front, Denby admits to being politically liberal with a strong distrust of the business community. After all, he's a movie critic by trade. He goes into deep ruminations on the anti-capitalist, anti-materialistic, anti-consumerism philosophies of luminaries from as far back as Thorstein Veblen and as current as Juliet Schor. Still, he wanted to be part of the Wall Street crowd, the wealthy, as he calls them, and he gladly entered into the dance.His most revealing, and important, commentary is through his love/hate relationship with ImClone founder and now felon, Sam Waksal. Happy to become one of "Sam's pals" and bask in the light of his dinner parties, Denby's exploration of what made Sam tick is worth the whole book. As he pounds the pavement of Manhattan's sidewalks, searching for meaning, Denby conjures up the 7 deadly sins, and settles on envy leading to greed as the two best fitted for himself and his new cronies on his chosen way to wealth. Near the end of the book, he even tries to offer just how much a "wealthy" person needs to have before becoming "greedy." Yet, as if to argue with himself, he makes the following observation, certainly the most cogent of the work: "The one thing shadowing their (the high-tech entrepreneurs) triumph was aging and it

Not Just A Financial Story....A Human Story

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