Cityboy: Beer and Loathing in the Square Mile (edition 2008)

It's very entertaining. It reads rather surprisingly like a modern version of one of those Victorian "rake's progress" type morality tales. As he steps deeper into debauchery, he has occasional reminders of the Christian principles of his parents. I'm not sure if that's a clever literary reference or just coincidence (Wikipedia says the author's mother was a missionary). ( )

Fictionalised account of his time as a worker in The City of London. Vivid and inventive use of expletives which becomes a bit repetitive. But the book is mostly interesting for his complete condemnation of the whole City shebang. All you ever thought about it was right; it is parasitic and only about making money, for the city types. The city he experienced was dominated by men, and their depraved appetites is what he uses to gain friends.
His argument that there is not a scrap of genuine knowledge in the City is somewhat undermined by his acquisition, later in the book, of a "brilliant" analyst, who does seem to be able to see the future.
It is a very moralistic book, he frequently ends his descriptions with an outright condemnation of what he has described. He regularly contrasts what he is doing with the honest job done by his father. He explores all the vices, although avoids personal involvement with the nastier sex and comments that his grandfather was a missionary.
Money has become an object in itself. The activities of the companies and of the people employed are of no account to the spider monitoring the signals from his web's threads. ( )

Self important but fun and often startling insight inot the excesses of City life. Based on the newspaper column of the same name

A frank and generally realistic pseudo account of the bizarre life of a London based equity analyst. Worthwhile detail for both practitioners and potential practitioners. One caveat - the author eggs up the social excesses of the City, presumably for commerical reasons. ( )