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

I was a little dubious about reading this book as I know next to nothing about oil exchange and I was worried I’d be a little overwhelmed and not understand what was going on. However Mezrich is fantastic at putting the reader at ease as he carefully and simply explained enough for you to get a gist of what was happening.Although it is based on a true story Mezrich’s style is to write like it is a fiction novel, meaning we’re never quite sure what is accurate and what has been modified. This actually made it an easier read for me as we weren’t weighed down by boring and complicated facts and I found it a funny, sharp and easy read.I really liked the main character David Russo and loved his guts and determination and the way he refused to take crap from anyone. He made mistakes, he sometimes rubbed people up the wrong way but ultimately he was trying hard to be the best that he could be. Khaled was also a brilliant character who refused to sit down and enjoy his uncle’s wealth. He wanted to change things for the better and was a great counterpart to David.I loved reading about Dubai as I went there last year and it was so much fun reading about the places I’ve been that David and Khaled went and also the places that I could only dream about going. He shows Dubai as the future and the greatest place on earth and it really is.I almost didn’t want the book to end. It’s the first time I’ve read Mezrich and he’s certainly an author I shall be keeping my eye out for in the future.

"Rigged" follows the true (but perhaps a bit embellished for dramatic effect) career of a newly minted college grad who falls into a job that is both a nightmare and dream job at the same time. As an executive-in-training for the NYMEX (NY Mercantile Exchange) the main character is hazed, threatened and ridiculed by old-timers who fear he is a harbinger of change. His job leads him to Dubai, where he plays a major part in negotiating the opening of an oil trading exchange in that country.The insights into commodities trading and the people involved were fascinating. Millions of dollars can be made - or lost - on a daily basis by street-wise young traders with high school educations at best.Also fascinating were the insights into Dubai. Few Westerners (myself included) are aware of what goes on in Dubai, but the level of wealth and economic development there is nothing short of amazing. It gives one a whole different perspective on the world economy.I knocked a star off my rating because of some human interest detours the author took. Also, the main character's near-affair was distracting and seemed a bit contrived.That said, I would recommend this book, especially to anyone interested in business.

I liked the book

Amazing book! Once I started reading it I couldn't put it down. Well written, easy to follow, extremely interesting. I would highly recommend this book.

Warning: 100% SPOILERS. For me, this book was a mixed bag. I truly loved Mezrich's "Oligarch" book, recommended it to everybody I knew, and even got into an hour-long discussion about it with a gorgeous young woman sunning outside by a pool at a resort (who was, alas, celebrating her one-year anniversary) who saw me reading it. So I began to crave another Mezrich book, and chose this one. Reading it was rather hard going and throughout all of it, I kept looking to see how much of the book I still had left to read. I do give Mezrich credit for being the kind of writer wherein in I wouldn't or couldn't just stop reading the book altogether. I honestly did want to know how all this wrapped up in the end. And honestly, now having finished, I am just not quite sure. I never figured out the meaning of the title and the absolute last pages were a total "Huh?" to me. Imagine writing an ending that wrecks the book Maybe other readers clearly "got it", but somehow, I didn't (but I do have an idea).Several things about the book were not my cup of tea. I have absolutely no interest in, admiration for, envy of, or any respect for the "Harvard Grad". I, too, went to college (Berkeley) and also law school. So millions of people go to good colleges. Also, I was not raised in some Brooklyn ghetto and feel that I have to fight tooth and nail to prove myself. On the other hand, I don't have a billion dollars either...but I have a lot of self-respect, I enjoy life, and feel secure in who I am. I think if I had to read the concept "change the world" or any of its derivatives just one more time, I would have thrown the book into the fireplace. That is such a "Creating the Matrix" phrase, in my view.The lead "hero" was somewhat sympathetic, but not gigantically. As a human being, his assets seemed to be that he was handsome, young, driven, and hardworking, every one of which are qualities of youth and, truth to tell, a youth that might sell very well in a modern day slave market. Interesting in how in some metaphorical way that was what this was all about, particularly since it involved the creation of a union of a MERCANTILE enterprise (all about "auctioning" energy) with a then and now "SLAVE TRADING CULTURE", the Middle East. Looks will fade, youth will quickly get old, one drives themselves to an early heart attack, and on their deathbed regret that they worked so hard for everybody else. All their money meant nothing to them when the end of life approached.On a positive side, I was interested in the oil exchange and figured that it is something worth knowing about in some way. For example, it made me marvel at the idea of the hierarchy of players--you maybe could make money buying and selling stocks, or in this setting, commodities, but think of the money that the brokers can make who get a piece of your trades whether you make money or lose, but then think of the traders on the exchange floor who are making money on the bulk trades of the brokerage firms, but THEN think of those who are making money owning the EXCHANGE itself. Why were so many of us ignorant of that (or was it just me?). So even if Mezrich didn't fully explain the workings of it, he gave enough to make me want to investigate it further from other sources. Part of that investigation led me to buy a book that was providing a visual dictionary of all the (now obsolete due to computerized trading) buy and sell hand signals used to denote financial figures, deal spreads, brokerage houses, and so on, a whole trading sign language that had evolved on the trading room floor.I think at the time this book was written (nearly a decade ago), Dubai was a much more exciting possibility than it is today. People have gone through their "hopes and dreams" slash "get me outta here" Dubai cycle by now. Just beyond the glitzy buildings are the neighborhoods of squalor, and beyond that, yep, just sand and heat. And I am not so sure how I would trust a "free" zone, myself. You can drink a beer in this district, but heaven help you if you try that over in that district. One might easily get lost and innocently commit some horrendous transgression. Do they flog visitors? (Yeah, I think, they do, for VISA VIOLATIONS.) And with a place seemingly ruled by an absolute power (moderated, perhaps, by another "absolute power", Sharia law), every person used to a measure of personal sovereignty is always vulnerable to a sudden change in the times. And witness what happened to laborers from India who had come to work on building all those glitzy skyscrapers. When Dubai's economy collapsed, their visas were instantly cancelled and they had something like 24 hours to get out of the Emirate. Dubai not only added proof to "the skyscraper economic index" (build the world's tallest skyscraper and the economy collapses), but also created a new one for the world, "the abandoned cars on the road to the airport index". So yeah, while I did get into that section of the book--I was genuinely excited when the Board arrived in Dubai--a horse race doesn't thrill me (and the EMIR was the winner, what does that show you?) so the excitement faded. Dubai sounds a bit more like North Korea than, say, Singapore.But okay, the Exchange idea was successful, for all that it is (not all that much as far as I can tell except for those who own it). Is it fair to say that Dubai is more of a Las Vegas than it is a Hong Kong? So the book would have ended on a happy note, except, WHAT? What was all this stuff about the hero's Arab partner having the spy pictures of the momentary sexual transgressions and apparently the women the hero dallied with was actually one of the photographer/spies? What really was going on on the trader floor that night; all that was written too darkly for me to quite get it. I wish someone else who read the book would let me know their thoughts on this. My conclusion (which could be totally boneheaded) was that the Emir's nephew, whom the hero considered to be like a brother, was actually in league with an effort to RIG this whole enterprise by discovering the perfect American patsy who will work himself to the bone in order to get the Americans on board this particular deal, but meanwhile, were keeping him on a sort leash by getting him caught sexually so that they could control him (and destroy him) if they needed to. Once the deal was made, the blackmail-able photos were no longer needed and therefore were shredded. (I'm also curious about the "encryption" for cell phone calls. Is that something that we can have too?)If my thoughts are true, then Mezrich wasn't so much on Dubai's side after all, or, I should say, had his doubts about them the whole time. And I think in reality, such doubts are justified. See what I meant when I said the Middle East is still slave-trading. Even though thanks to global pressure Dubai had to get rid of their kidnapped and enslaved Indian boy camel race jockeys and replace them with mechanical "jockeys", they still used India as their source of "all but" slave labor building up all those glitzy towers, and they weren't above enslaving the cerebral labors of a Harvard Business School graduate from Brooklyn desperate to prove himself, Yeah, it's all RIGGED, and that might actually be Mezrich's view after all. Okay, I will give him another star.