Ben Mezrich, author of the New York Times bestseller Bringing Down the House, returns with an astonishing story of Ivy League hedge-fund cowboys, high stakes, and the Asian underworld.

Ugly Americans is the true story of John Malcolm, a hungry young Princeton grad who traveled halfway around the world in search of the American dream and ultimately pulled off a trade that could, quite simply, be described as the biggest deal in the history of the financial markets.

After receiving a mysterious phone call promising him a shot at great fortune in an exotic land, Malcolm packed up his few belongings and took the chance of a lifetime. Without speaking a word of Japanese, with barely a penny in his pocket, Malcolm was thrown into the bizarre, adrenaline-fueled life of an expat trader. Surrounded by characters ripped right out of a Hollywood thriller, he quickly learned how to survive in a cutthroat world — at the feet of the biggest players the markets have ever known.

Malcolm was first an assistant trading huge positions for Nick Leeson, the twenty-six-year-old rogue trader who lost nearly two billion dollars and brought down Barings Bank — the oldest in England. Then he was the right-hand man to an enigmatic and brilliant hedge-fund cowboy named Dean Carney, and grew into one of the biggest derivatives traders in all of Asia. Along the way, Malcolm fell in love with the daughter of a Yakuza gangster, built a vast fortune out of thin air, and came head-to-head with the violent Japanese mobsters who helped turn the Asian markets into the turbulent casino it is today.

Malcolm and his twentysomething, Ivy League–schooled colleagues, with their warpedsense of morality and proportion, created their own economic theory: Arbitrage with a Battle Axe. They rode the crashing waves of the Asian markets during the mid- to late 1990s, culminating in a single deal the likes of which had never been seen before — or since.

A real-life mixture of Liar's Poker and Wall Street, brimming with intense action, romance, underground sex, vivid locales, and exotic characters, Ugly Americans is the untold, true story that will rock the financial community and redefine an era.

"In a truly engaging look at how an innocent who thinks he knows the world does actually end up understanding a small but significant piece of it, Mezrich manages to incorporate solid journalism into a narrative that just plain works." Publishers Weekly

"Undeniably fun, but readers may well wonder just how much of this could actually be true." Kirkus Reviews

“ Mezrich is making a cottage industry out of documenting the misbehavior of Ivy League snots...Entertaining...Mezrich’ s audacity matches that of his ‘ subjects’ ”

The bestselling author of "Bringing Down the House" pens the true story of a group of elite hedge fund cowboys and adrenaline junkies who rode the Japanese markets to the brink of bankruptcy and became millionaires while still in their twenties.

Ben Mezrich has published nine books, including the New York Times bestseller Bringing Down the House (set to be a Sony picture in March 2008 starring Kevin Spacey). He is a columnist for Stuff magazine and Boston Common, and a contributor for Flush magazine (U.K.). He lives in Boston, Massachusetts.