Monkey Business

Swinging Through the Wall Street Jungle

By: John Rolfe, Peter Troob

Narrated by: John Rolfe, Peter Troob

Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's summary

They hit "The Street."

Forget what you've read, forget what you've heard, forget what you've been taught. Monkey Business pulls off Wall Street's suspenders and gives the listener the inside skinny on real life at an investment bank, where the promised land is always one more 20-hour workday and another lap dance away.

"The Street" hit back.

Fresh out of Wharton and Harvard business schools, John Rolfe and Peter Troob ran willingly into the open arms of investment bank giant Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette. They had signed on as foot soldiers in a white-collar army of overworked and frustrated lemmings furiously trying to spin straw into gold. They escaped with the remnants of their sanity - and, ultimately, this book.

Uncensored, unsanitized, and uncut, it captures the chaotic essence of the Wall Street carnival and the outlandish personalities that make it all hum...and it will become the smartest, most entertaining investment you'll make this year.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2009 John Rolfe (P)2018 Hachette Audio

Amazingly pertinent

I work on Wall Street and got a great laugh from this book. It’s wildly accurate in terms of the life bankers lead and having the writers doing the narration add liveliness. There are a few odd narrations that sound like they were spliced in but overall very good.

Loved It!

Very interesting look at 2 guys as Investment Banking Associates in the late 90s and early 2000s. Funny stories kept me laughing.

Last chapter brought some more recent updates from the print edition. Worth listening to.

Most Entertaining and engaging book I’ve listened on Audible.

This book will make you, laugh, think, and really reconsider your career as an investment banker.

Listen to it in X1.75 or X2.0

You won’t regret it!

A look into the old glorious investment banker’s life

As a finance graduate, it was quite interesting to read this book and learn more about the daily life of the old investment banker’s life. Although the authors’ experience on Wall Street might be outdated because of the year it was written, the idea that most banks on Wall Street live on the greed and the seemingly promised future of oasis is still true. Despite all the pain and despair that might bring by the career choice of an investment banker, going to all these banks on Wall Street is still the dream of most finance graduate. This book written by two authors, one had previous experience in banking prior to business school and one didn’t have experience in finance before, provides reader the qualities and traits that needed to survive the investment bank career. Not everyone in finance industry is suitable for the investment banker except the ones with the tough mind, the willingness to sacrifice personal life, the workaholic mentality and the excellent social skills. This book gave me more information to think about the career path I want to take and the preparation needed. A nice and fun read !

Interesting and well told, could have done w/less of the frat boy descriptions

The authors did a good job of explaining the investment banking world and the true nature of the job. However, constantly equating their experiences to sexual jokes got old. Obviously, the events and book predate #MeToo.

Outstanding book

As an investment banker myself in 2023, there are a lot of similarities between these stories and what happens nowadays. Obviously some aspects of the storytelling have become outdated such as the copy center or word processing dept. Apart from these minor points i highly recommend

Uhm

I loved the dual storytelling and the points of intersections. John is very dry witted and deadpan meanwhile Peter is very cynical in his affliction. And according to the Audible credits, they do narrate. I felt it added depth to their characters.

What a mess!

This is not a good book. It is basically a step by step explanation of how investment banking works for dummies with a few funny stories of excess thrown in. Additionally, the prologue seems bizarre. Why? What does it have to do with the story?

Try The Buy Side by Turney Duff or Why I left Goldman Sachs by Greg Smith for a much better account of Wall Street and far more entertaining story.