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The Buy Side: A Wall Street Trader’s Tale of Spectacular Excess by Turney Duff
Rating: ★★★★★
Date Finished: December 20th, 2013
Reading Time: Two days
My favorite Wall Street non-fiction book.
The Buy Side is leagues above the benchmark for books in this genre. Though it is clear that Turney Duff, who majored in Journalism, spent a significant amount of time developing this narrative, the reader never has an inkling of suspicion that what’s being peddled is falsehood. It’s an endearing novel with highs and lows that, while not as historically significant as a Liar’s Poker, speaks to the individual at a level deeper than greed, sex, and tropes of male aggression that other novels celebrate.
The crazy part about what I’m trying to communicate in this review is that this book was absolutely marketed as something raw, naughty, and inappropriate. I can’t deny that the book contains material that would make Michael Lewis blush, but I can’t get away from thinking, all these years later, that the book is wholesome and genuine. I’ve since read dozens of books about Wall Street, trading, and rich people spending with reckless abandon, and still, the image of Turney’s bonus check pervades my thoughts.
There are many classic scenes, quotes, and educational factoids from this book that I remember so fondly. I use this book as a subconscious basis of comparison for not only finance books, but also autobiographies. I can’t credit The Buy Side with igniting my passion for reading, but it was near ground zero. It is my hope, more so than usual, that people will see this review and have as positive of an experience with the book as I did.
See this review and others on Goodreads.com
