Everyone in Wall Street knows James Cramer. And Cramer knows Wall Street better than anyone. Here, the storied trader and hedge fund manager traces his extraordinary career—from his childhood (spent poring over the financial pages while the other kids played sports) right up to his recent decision to leave his hedge fund and devote himself to journalism. Confessions of a Street Addict is packed with revelations: the secrets behind the pricing of those formerly red-hot Internet IPOs; the predatory instincts of insiders who attack bloodied stock funds; and tales from Cramer's often clashing careers as fund manager and financial journalist. Confessions is a high-octane, all-true tale of the Street—from one of its most towering personalities.

Cramer, famous for appearing on CNBC as the "wild excitable guy [with]... a big mouth and lots of passion talking authoritatively about how you could make money by getting on the Net," recounts his turbulent dual career as hedge fund manager and media pundit. Cramer tells of his lifelong obsession with the market, beginning with childhood scenes of poring over daily stock listings. The story kicks into high gear once he starts juggling his law school course load so he can spend as much time as possible trading (over the phone, in the pre-Internet '80s). After that, the narrative's pace never relents from depictions of Cramer's early days at Goldman Sachs through the launch of his own fund, which led to magazine columns, a near-constant presence on TV, and TheStreet.com. Cramer's description of the financial news Web site's launch is ruthless, not just toward the executives whose scheming and mismanagement, he says, undermined TheStreet.com's success, but toward himself for hiring them and temporarily destroying his long-standing friendship with publishing fixture Marty Peretz. Cramer is equally self-recriminating about the effect his fanatical trading had on his personal life, but clearly still loves to linger over every major deal of his career (and a lot of the minor ones), even perhaps especially if they blew up in his face. This is a lively, informative portrait of the highest levels of finance and media in the last decade. Agent, Suzanne Gluck. (May 13) Forecast: In mid-March, HarperCollins published Nicholas W. Maier's Trading with the Enemy, a kiss-and-tell about Cramer. HC's decision to pulp the book due to false assertions it contains about Cramer will no doubt fuel interest in Cramer's book. Expect lots of buzz in financial publications and decent sales in Manhattan and Silicon Valley bookstores. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

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• Biographies & Memoirs
  • Memoirs