um book club: rigged by ben mezrich

Before UM was knee high to a grasshopper, its founding fathers started their own book club. It involved taking turns selecting a book and then meeting once a week to drink beers and discuss it. When it was finally my turn to choose, I selected “Ugly Americans” by Ben Mezrich. I’d fallen in love with his gripping, sometimes graphic, always sexy style of non-fiction after reading his two exposes on card counting (which launched my own obsession with the craft).

“Ugly Americans” was our quickest read ever. Between the ultimate male wish fulfillment lifestyle of its protagonist, exotic locations, and the dangerous world of the Japanese Yakuza (mafia) exposed, it proved the ultimate page turner.

Mezrich’s latest opus “Rigged” is primed to do the same thing for Urban Monarch’s current book club.

From the Amazon description:

the startling rags-to-riches story of an Italian-American kid from the streets of Brooklyn who claws his way into the wild, frenetic world of the oil exchange.After conquering the hallowed halls of Harvard Business School, he enters the testosterone-laced warrens of the Merc Exchange, the asylumlike oil exchange located in lower Manhattan. A place where billions of dollars trade hands every week, the Merc is like a casino on crack, where former garbagemen become millionaires overnight and where fistfights break out on the trading floor.

This ordinary kid has traded Brooklyn for the gold-lined hotel palaces of Dubai. He keeps company on the decks of private yachts in Monte Carlo—teeming with half-naked girls flown in by Saudi sheiks—and makes deals in the dangerous back alleys of Beijing.

But the Merc is just a starting place. Taken under the wing of another young gun and partnering with a mysterious young Muslim, the kid embarks on a dangerous adventure to revolutionize the oil trading industry—and, along with it, the world.

What better way to ring in the new year than reading a new book with your friends at UM?

The first assignment will appear here on January 2nd.

Order your copy (saving 34% over retail, AND supporting UM in the process!) by using the link below.

Rigged: The True Story of an Ivy League Kid Who Changed the World of Oil, from Wall Street to Dubai