“Part coming-of-age story, part recovery memoir, and component exposé of the rotten, money-drenched Wall Street lifestyle” (Salon), Sam Polk’s unflinching account chronicles his combat to overcome the ghosts of his past-and the radical new method he today defines success.

At only thirty years of age, Sam Polk was a senior trader for just one of the largest hedge funds on Wall Street, in the verge of earning it to the very top. When he was provided an annual reward of $3.75 million, he grew angry because it had not been about For the Like of Money: A Memoir enough. It was then he knew he had dropped himself in his obsessive quest for 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 made a decision to walk away from it all.

For Polk, becoming a Wall Street trader was the fulfillment of his dreams. But in reality it was simply the culmination of a lifestyle of addictive and self-destructive behaviors, from overeating, to bulimia, to alcohol and drug abuse. His obsessive pursuit of cash papered over years of insecurity and emotional abuse. Making money was simply the latest try to fill the void still 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 flooring, capturing the modern frustrations of young graduates attracted to Wall structure Street. Polk’s “raw, honest and personal undertake one man’s trip in and out of the business…really gives readers something to take into account” (CNBC.com). It is “compellingly created…unflinchingly honest…about the inner journey Polk undertakes to redefine success” (Forbes).