Generation Desperation

The modern-day American dream: one man's journey into the depths of Reddit trading forums chasing the promise of a 'better life' 'A fantastically compelling personal story that is also the story of a generation . . . Told with perfect timing.' - SIMON KUPER '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 AS FEATURED IN THE SUNDAY TIMES -------- AFTER THE RISE, THERE COMES A FALL. In 2020, Alexander Hurst was 29 years old and broke, living as a writer in a cramped Paris flatshare. 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. --------- 'Has an appealing timelessness . . . Hurst weaves the personal and the generational together with seamless ease in a thrilling book.' - SEB EMINA 'A riveting, tender, and painfully timely epic about what really matters.' - ANGELICA FERRARA 'Clever and brutally honest.' - LINDSEY TRAMUTA

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.