Generation Desperation (Hardcover)

Alexander Hurst

ISBN 10: 1399728288 / ISBN 13: 9781399728287

Published by Hodder & Stoughton, 2026

About this Item

Hardcover. 'Somewhere in the multiverse, innumerable possibilities are collapsing into infinite different realities. Am I happier in any of them? I still don't know. The answer to that question is just one more thing that $1.2 million could never buy.'In 2020, Alexander Hurst was 29 years old and broke, living as a writer in a cramped Paris flat-share. There were murmurs that a global pandemic was coming. Financial stability seemed unattainable, so far removed from his reality - the reality of the generation who came of age during the 2008 financial crisis. On a whim, he poured his meagre savings into highly risky options trading. Within a year this small set of stocks was worth $1.2 million. Enough to turn his life on its head - but not in the way he had imagined, as he began a slow motion descent into losing it all. In exploring Alexander's remarkable rise and fall from wealth, Generation Desperation grapples with the vital questions of our age: what do class and status mean in a late-stage capitalist society? Can everyone really build the life they want? Or is there a cost to pursuing money above everything?Generation Desperation is an urgent, unmissable fable for our times. The remarkable story of how one man made a million dollars in online trading and lost it overnight - from the voice of a generation. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9781399728287

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Generation Desperation (Hardcover)
• Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
• Publication Date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1399728288
• ISBN 13: 9781399728287
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

In 2020, Alexander was a 29-year-old American writer with no money, living in a cramped Paris flat-share. With the future of everything seeming deeply uncertain, he decided to do what so many millennials were doing: 'YOLO' his meagre savings into highly risky options trading. What followed was an eighteen month long psychological roller coaster. In a stunning display of unbelievable folly, Alexander had turned a small loan into $1.2 million and lost it all - but in its place, had gained a good story to tell.

In a book that's part-memoir, part-exploration of late capitalism, Hurst grapples with the vital questions of our age: how do you build a life when you're blocked from the means to do so? Are we still bound by class and social status, or has the internet freed us? Is it worth becoming a monstrous narcissist in the pursuit of wealth?

About the Author

Alexander Hurst is a writer whose longform articles and essays have appeared in places like the Guardian, Hazlitt, the New Republic, Eater, and the Caravan. After completing an undergraduate degree at Amherst College, Massachusetts, he spent a year working in southern Chad. He has an MSc. in International Relations from the London School of Economics, and an MA in Public Policy from Sciences Po, where he currently teaches a first-year humanities seminar, 'In Search of Respect: US Democracy Confronting Race and Inequality,' as well as a writing workshop. Following on from the success of his essay, he will be writing a wide-ranging twice-monthly column about life, society and culture for the Guardian, beginning in May 2023. He became a French citizen in summer 2022 and lives in Paris.