A candid memoir of greed, power, and hedonism journeys inside the high-stakes world of finance as the former head of the notorious investment firm Stratton Oakmont describes the rise and fall of his financial empire, his life of jet-setting glamour and excess, and the scandal that destroyed his empire, sent him to prison, and led to a near-fatal brush with drug abuse. Reprint. 30,000 first printing NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Now a major motion picture directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio By day he made thousands of dollars a minute. By night he spent it as fast as he could. From the binge that sank a 170-foot motor yacht and ran up a $700,000 hotel tab, to the wife and kids waiting at home and the fast-talking, hard-partying young stockbrokers who called him king, here, in Jordan Belfort's own words, is the story of the ill-fated genius they called the Wolf of Wall Street. In the 1990s, Belfort became one of the most infamous kingpins in American finance: a brilliant, conniving stock-chopper who led his merry mob on a wild ride out of Wall Street and into a massive office on Long Island. It's an extraordinary story of greed, power, and excess that no one could invent: the tale of an ordinary guy who went from hustling Italian ices to making hundreds of millions-until it all came crashing down. Praise for The Wolf of Wall Street"Raw and frequently hilarious."-The New York Times "A rollicking tale of [Jordan Belfort's] rise to riches as head of the infamous boiler room Stratton Oakmont . . . proof that there are indeed second acts in American lives."-Forbes "A cross between Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities and Scorsese's GoodFellas . . . Belfort has the Midas touch."-The Sunday Times (London) "Entertaining as pulp fiction, real as a federal indictment . . . a hell of a read."-Kirkus Reviews