Gambling Man
The Wild Ride of Japan’s Masayoshi Son
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd
Published:3rd Oct '24
Should be back in stock very soon
This hardback is available in another edition too:
- Paperback£10.99(9781802060577)
Gambling Man is the biography of one of the world’s least known but most consequential investors.
Japan’s Masayoshi Son has made and lost several fortunes, investing or controlling assets worth $1 trillion in the past two decades through his media-tech giant, SoftBank. He bankrolled Alibaba, China’s internet colossus, before the world had heard about it; plotted with Steve Jobs to turn the iPhone into a wonder product; and financed hundreds of tech start-ups, fuelling the biggest boom Silicon Valley has ever seen.
This book takes you on Son’s wild ride, from his birthplace in a Korean slum in post-war Japan to the modern-day temples of power. It speeds through Donald Trump’s golden skyscraper in Manhattan, the royal palaces of Riyadh and the throne rooms of China’s Marxist rulers; all places where Son has deployed his unique blend of financial engineering and crazy risk-taking.
Son’s story captures a 25 year-span of hyper-globalisation in which money, technologies and ideas flowed freely. From the launch of the microchip to the advent of artificial intelligence, he has ridden the technological wave which has created extraordinary wealth and economic change. His topsy-turvy business career is testimony to the power of optimism, daring to dream, ever in search of the Next Big Thing.
As an ethnic Korean in Japan, Son has overcome adversity and discrimination to become Japan’s best-known businessman and empire-builder but he remains an elusive, intensely private figure. This book, by a former editor of the Financial Times, contains a wealth of new information and has had the co-operation of many of the key participants, including Son himself. Written with a verve appropriate to its subject, Gambling Man reveals the man behind the money, what drives him, why he matters, and what he plans for his next act.
A rare insight into the life of Masayoshi Son, the mysterious Korean-Japanese tech investor who has made — and lost — more money than anyone else this century... Barber sets out Son’s extraordinary backstory, details all the deals, big and small, that Son did to enrich himself and [gives] a privileged boardroom-table view of the gilded age of tech-utopianism and borderless finance [with an] eye for colour [that] is more than enough to keep the everyday reader engaged. -- John Arlidge * Sunday Times *
Like Ron Chernow on John D. Rockefeller, or Walter Isaacson on Steve Jobs, Lionel Barber has given us the defining account of an era in business history. Gambling Man confirms Barber's gift for brilliantly decoding the nuances of power. He dissects the layers of Masayoshi Son’s empire to reveal the anatomy of modern risk -- Evan Osnos, National Book Award-winning author of Age of Ambition
Gambling Man is a brilliant achievement of investigative reporting and narrative writing. The story of Mayoshi Son and Softbank's ambition and error across decades is fascinating in its own right and essential to an understanding of global tech and finance since the 1990s. With literary flair and stunning revelations, Lionel Barber delivers one of the very best biographies of a business titan to appear in years. -- Steve Coll, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Ghost Wars: the secret history of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden
Gambling Man is a pacy and highly professional telling of Son’s remarkable story, which skilfully draws out its broader historical themes. -- Felix Martin * Financial Times *
A sure-footed account ... Barber has a journalist's eye for his subject's telling idiosyncracies ... [his] detailed biography documents a career punctuaed with attention-grabbing successes and abrupt reversals. -- Henry Hitchings * Spectator *
Lionel Barber has written a fascinating book about Masa Son, one of the world’s most prolific investors and business builders. Masa’s story has the makings of an Ian Fleming novel. It’s hard to imagine someone like Masa has done more things than almost anyone you could imagine. Lionel cracked the code in helping us all understand this remarkable individual. -- Steve Schwarzman, co-founder of the Blackstone Group
Son deserves far wider recognition than has come his way, and Gambling Man is a parable that should be read by every would-be business empire builder -- Martin Vander Weyer * Times Literary Supplement *
ISBN: 9780241582725
Dimensions: 242mm x 162mm x 39mm
Weight: 687g
416 pages