Generation Desperation
The must-read memoir of trading your way to a million dollars via Robinhood and WallStreetBets
$59.84
- Hardcover
272 pages
- Release Date
9 June 2026
Summary
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 - b…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781399728287 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 1399728288 |
| Author: | Alexander Hurst |
| Publisher: | Hodder & Stoughton |
| Imprint: | Hodder & Stoughton |
| Format: | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages: | 272 |
| Release Date: | 9 June 2026 |
| Weight: | 477g |
| Dimensions: | 240mm x 162mm x 28mm |
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Critics Review
A fantastically compelling personal story that is also the story of a generation. Hurst captures millennial desperation about money, and the seduction of get-rich-quick stories in the social-media era. Told with perfect timing. – Simon Kuper
A cautionary tale to young men raised on internet hustle culture, Hurst offers us a silver thread of hope in a moment where masculinity can feel in freefall. A mythic warning about the pitfalls of chasing shiny things. Generation Desperation is a riveting, tender, and painfully timely epic about what really matters. – Angelica Ferrara
A clever and brutally honest, Zeitgeisty tale of an ambitious thirty-something trying to make sense of his generation, its hurdles, and what it means to let enough be enough. – Lindsey Tramuta
This page-turner of a memoir tells a story which could only have happened in the 2020s with all the meme stocks, app-facilitated dates and Covid lockdowns that this implies. But for all its ultra-modernity it has an appealing timelessness to it as well. The ‘rags to riches to rags again’ story is a classic archetype after all, as are American writers in Paris in search of a different life. Hurst weaves the personal and the generational together with seamless ease in a thrilling book that says a lot about the times we are in. – Seb Emina
Searing insights into the challenges of coming of age in the 21st century … an instructive tale about a smart young man looking to grow up in the precariousness of our time * Bloomberg *
About The Author
Alexander Hurst
Alexander Hurst is a writer whose long-form essays and reportage have appeared in the Guardian, Hazlitt, The New Republic, Eater, The Caravan, and elsewhere. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, he has an undergraduate degree from Amherst College, Massachusetts, an MSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics, and an MA in Public Policy from Sciences Po, where he has also taught a first-year seminar on contemporary democracy in the United States. He writes a wide-ranging, regular column about French and European issues for the Guardian. He lives in Paris.
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