Generation Desperation: The Must-Read Memoir Of Trading Your Way To A Million Dollars

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?

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.