Make Me Even and I'll Never Gamble Again

by Jerrold Fine

Genres: Biographical; Coming of Age; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

“A rip-roaring yarn of baseball, poker and Wall Street told with humor and humanity, and a loving rendering of Wharton in the seventies” (Geoffrey Garrett, Dean, The Wharton School). Rogers Stout has the gambler’s gifts—a titanic brain, an uncanny ability to read people, and a risk-taker’s daring. As an apathetic high school student who loves baseball but lacks a ninety-mph fastball, he knows that the game does not begin until the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand. But his life needs direction. Everything changes the summer he is invited into the boisterous environment of an investment bank’s trading room, and to a gambling hall dive where he immediately wins big at poker, capturing the attention of his co-workers with his card-playing skills. Intrigued by trading markets, Rogers’ intellectual curiosity takes him to Wharton and then Wall Street, where he faces challenges as an outsider who thinks and acts differently from the white-shoe establishment. As Rogers plays his career hand, life plays another. Should he follow the temptress Elsbeth and her ravishing beauty, or Charlotte, his high-spirited first love? An intriguing look at human aspiration and the interplay of honor, greed, fear, and individuality, the novel Make Me Even and I’ll Never Gamble Again reveals a time when a new generation upended the status quo on Wall Street and forever changed investing. “By turns hilarious, insightful, and touching, Fine has written a coming-of-age story for the ages.” —Peter Lattman, vice chairman, The Atlantic “[An] absorbing story of an aspiring Wall Street trader.” — Kirkus Reviews

Release date: August 14, 2018

Publisher: RosettaBooks

Print pages: 312