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    For the Love of Money: A Memoir
    For the Love of Money: A Memoir
    For the Love of Money: A Memoir
    Audiobook8 hours

    For the Love of Money: A Memoir

    Written by Sam Polk

    Narrated by Sam Polk

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    About this audiobook

    “Part coming-of-age story, part recovery memoir, and part exposé of a rotten, money-drenched Wall Street culture” (Salon), Sam Polk’s unflinching account chronicles his fight to overcome the ghosts of his past—and the radical new way he now defines success.

    At just thirty years old, Sam Polk was a senior trader for one of the biggest hedge funds on Wall Street, on the verge of making it to the very top. When he was offered an annual bonus of $3.75 million, he grew angry because it was not enough. It was then he knew he had lost himself in his obsessive pursuit of money. And he had come to loathe the culture—the shallowness, the sexism, the crude machismo—and Wall Street’s use of wealth as the sole measure of a person’s worth. He decided to walk away from it all.

    For Polk, becoming a Wall Street trader was the fulfillment of his dreams. But in reality it was just the culmination of a life of addictive and self-destructive behaviors, from overeating, to bulimia, to alcohol and drug abuse. His obsessive pursuit of money papered over years of insecurity and emotional abuse. Making money was just the latest attempt to fill the void left by his narcissistic and emotionally unavailable father.

    “Vivid, picaresque...riveting” (NewYorker.com), For the Love of Money brings you into the rarefied world of Wall Street trading floors, capturing the modern frustrations of young graduates drawn to Wall Street. Polk’s “raw, honest and intimate take on one man’s journey in and out of the business…really gives readers something to think about” (CNBC.com). It is “compellingly written...unflinchingly honest...about the inner journey Polk undertakes to redefine success” (Forbes).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateJul 19, 2016
    ISBN9781508217718
    Author

    Sam Polk

    Former hedge fund trader Sam Polk is a writer; cofounder and CEO of Everytable, a social enterprise that sells fresh, delicious meals at prices everyone can afford; and the founder and executive director of Groceryships, a nonprofit that helps low-income families struggling with obesity. Polk graduated from Columbia University in 2002 with a BA in English and holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Designation. His writing has been published in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, and CNBC.com. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and their daughter. For the Love of Money is his first book.

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    Reviews for For the Love of Money

    4/5

    33 ratings3 reviews

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    • 5/5
      i was expexting business data, consulting and analysis but it is mors about the story of sam through his life. i liked it.
    • 5/5
      Great book, highly recommend. The honesty of Sam Polk's experience is a mirror from which the reader can reflect on their own life and what's important.
    • 3/5
      I have read a number of these bad boys of Wall Street books. Here is yet another, the trials and tribulations of Sam Polk on Wall Street. Actually very little of the book deals with his trading exploits but focuses more on his personal crises. His troubled family relations, his bulimia, his drug issues, alcohol, relationships, etc. etc.He does not get much into how he got to Wall Street with his English major from Columbia. Yet he somehow becomes this whiz kid trader raking in millions. Then he shifts to the great disappointment and delusion of this culture he has to contend with on the Street. Greed, avarice, contempt set in to drive him on to a more altruist endeavors in the end. But Sam takes a few million along for safe keeping in his new life and later admits he laments walking away from all that glitter and gold. In the end he could have taken his college degree and pursued a job in retail management at near minimum wage and avoided all of this trouble. But then there would have been no book.