The Buy Side, by former Galleon Group trader Turney Duff, portrays an after-hours Wall Street culture where drugs and sex are rampant and billions in trading commissions flow to those who dangle the most enticements. A remarkable writing debut, filled with indelible moments, The Buy Side shows as no book ever has the rewards – and dizzying temptations – of making a living on the Street.

Growing up in the 1980’s Turney Duff was your average kid from Kennebunk, Maine, eager to expand his horizons. After trying – and failing – to land a job as a journalist, he secured a trainee position at Morgan Stanley and got his first feel for the pecking order that exists in the trading pits. Those on the “buy side,” the traders who make large bets on whether a stock will rise or fall, are the “alphas” and those on the “sell side,” the brokers who handle their business, are eager to please.

How eager to please was brought home stunningly to Turney in 1999 when he arrived at the Galleon Group, a colossal hedge-fund management firm run by secretive founder Raj Rajaratnam. Finally in a position to trade on his own, Turney was encouraged to socialize with the sell side and siphon from his new broker friends as much information as possible. Soon he was not just vacuuming up valuable tips but also being lured into a variety of hedonistic pursuits. Naïve enough to believe he could keep up the lifestyle without paying a price, he managed to keep an eye on hisbuy-and-sell charts and, meanwhile, pondered the strange goings on at Galleon, where tens of millions were being made each week in sometimes mysterious ways.

At his next positions, at Argus Partners and J.L. Berkowitz, Turney climbed to even higher heights – and, as it turned out, plummeted to even lower depths – as, by day, he solidified his reputation one of the Street’s most powerful healthcare traders, and by night, he blazed a path through the city’s nightclubs, showing off his social genius and voraciously inhaling any drug that would fill the void he felt inside.

A mesmerizingly immersive journey through Wall Street’s first millennial decade, and a poignant self portrait by a young man who surely would have destroyed himself were it not for his decision to walk away from a seven-figure annual income, The Buy Side is one of the best coming-of-age-on-the-Street books ever written.

As the youngest of four children and the only boy with three perfectly behaved, straight A-student sisters, I quickly developed a knack for doing things differently. Being a B student with a 970 SAT I had to think creatively. Like convincing my junior English teacher to let me write a screenplay instead of a term paper or writing and directing a Brady Bunch horror movie for Spanish 3. And for extra credit a short story about being reincarnated into a twenty dollar bill, but it was always just a little bit different.

I was born in Cleveland in 1969 (which explains the tattoo of Chief Wahoo, the Indian's mascot, on my ankle), but moved to Kennebunk, Maine when I was only 7. Kennebunk is a nice place to visit and an even better place to grow up, which, of course, means I couldn't wait to get out of there.

I graduated from Ohio University's E.W. Scripps School of Journalism in 1993 and then moved to New York City with one-month's rent to my name. I was going to be a journalist. I wanted to write. But one-month's rent isn't enough to become a journalist in New York, so I found out. It's not enough to become just about anything in New York except maybe a homeless person. Luckily, I guess, my uncle gave me a couple of phone numbers to call-his contacts on Wall Street.

Though Wall Street wasn't in my plan, once I was there I figured what the hell? Let's make some money. So I set my sights on a trading career. But during those fifteen years of climbing the Wall Street money tree, writing would call to me, like a whisper somewhere in the back of my thoughts, but, never forceful enough for me to focus on it or sit down long enough to truly pursue.

It would take nearly a complete disaster in my life, self-inflicted by city lights and fondness of cocaine for me to turn back to the page. But it took what it takes, and I'm grateful it did.

Now I'm right back where I started with a month's rent saved up and an empty computer screen in front of me and I couldn't be happier. Oh yes I could. And am. When I'm with my seven-year-old daughter, Lola.

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