Rigged
Ben Mezrich has cornered the market on the “hot-shot” biography with books like Bringing Down The House and Busting Vega$, which both told the story of young blackjack players who started out humble nerds and ended up carrying duffel bags of cash out of casinos. Most of his guys he profiles end up getting too much too fast, and are unable to handle the concept of winning millions of dollars by taking math out of the classroom and into the gaming room. Now with Rigged, he tells of John D’Agostino (who goes by the name “David Russo” in the book, until he reveals himself in the afterword he penned for the book) and finds not just his newest young gun to profile, but one is the subject of one of the most entertaining books of the year.
“Russo” is a kid stuck in a cubicle for Merrill Lynch, with only the future of being a drone ahead of him. But a chance meeting at an Italian-America awards dinner with the Chairman of the New York Mercantile Exchange (or “The Merc”) changes his life forever. The Merc, as Russo and we find out, trades in oil, and the money made on a daily basis put the winnings of Mezrich’s blackjack boys to shame. Soon Russo is rushing into a world of million-dollar trades, parties that last into the next workday, and a schoolyard atmosphere where only the big dogs survive.
Mezrich’s writing style puts you right in the middle of the action, as the numbers and punches are thrown on the trading floor. The author does a great job of not bogging down the audience with the technicalities of how The Merc works. He knows where the real story is: How a 25-year old kid ends up at odds of a cigar-chomping, third-generation trader from Brooklyn called (what else) “The Don.” You start rooting for the kid when his big dream project comes though after a mystery invitation from a sheik’s son in Dubai.
At the same time he is telling Russo’s story, Mezrich tell of Khaled, who wants Russo to build him a “Merc” in Dubai, which is described as an oasis of excess in the middle of the dessert. Mezrich paints Khaled and Russo as two sides of the same coin, young blood trying to pump life into the old guard. While the story drags a bit when Khaled’s story is told in the beginning, the action picks up when the two team up to get their job done.
With Bringing Down The House becoming a movie in 2008, this story has all the action and intrigue of a major motion picture. I found myself reading chapters as a fast clip, and as much as I hate the phrase “page turner,” this was the first book in a while I’ve read that fits the description. You needed to remind yourself that it’s a non-fiction book, as the action moves from New York, to The Middle East, to Beijing.
Don’t worry about if the only thing you know about oil is that your car needs a change soon. What the New York Mercantile Exchange involves is not the story here: It’s what it turns you into, and how you can never go back to your old self. Mezrich has outdone himself in a genre he pretty much invented. I can’t wait to see what hot shot he finds next.
