Gambling Man - by Lionel Barber

Book Synopsis

The former editor of the Financial Times delivers, "with literary flair and stunning revelations" (Steve Coll, Pulitzer Prize winner), the unputdownable first Western biography of SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, financial disruptor and personification of the 21st century's addiction to instant wealth.

As Wall Street swooned and boomed through the last decade, our livelihoods have--now more than ever--come to rely upon the good sense and risk appetites of a few standout investors. And amidst the BlackRocks, Vanguards, and Berkshire Hathaways stands arguably the most iconoclastic of them all: SoftBank's Masayoshi Son.

In this "meticulously researched, balance, thoroughly readable" (Booklist, starred review) biography, we go behind the scenes of the world's most monied halls of power in New York, Tokyo, Silicon Valley, Saudi Arabia, and beyond to see how Son's firm SoftBank has defied conventional wisdom and imposing odds to push global tech and commerce into the future.

From the dizzying highs of Uber, DoorDash, and Slack to the epic lows of WeWork and tech-infused dog-walking app Wag, Son and SoftBank have been at the center of cutting-edge capitalism's absolute peaks and valleys. In the process, Son, son of a pachinko kingpin who grew up in a slum in Japan, has been a hero, a villain, and even a meme-ified hero to the internet tech- and finance-bro set all at once.

Based on in-depth research and eye-opening interviews, Gambling Man is "not only a first-rate biography of an elusive billionaire" (Bloomberg), it's also an alarming true story of 21st-century commerce that will stick with you long after you turn the final page.

Review Quotes

"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 combines insight into its subject's complex and mercurial personality-comparable to Walter Isaacson's recent life of Elon Musk-with a rarer quality: patient detailing of the labyrinthine financial path that led Son from the margins of Japanese society to a place at the very pinnacle of the global plutocracy."
--Niall Ferguson, Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and author of The House of Rothschild and The Ascent of Money

"Fascinating... Masa's story has the makings of an Ian Fleming novel. Lionel Barber cracked the code in helping us all understand this remarkable individual."
--Steven A. Schwarzman, Chairman, CEO & Co-Founder, Blackstone

"Penetrating analysis of one of the most important and least understood figures in global finance today. Very few journalists have ever delved into Son's complex and opaque past in Japan and Korea, and even fewer have successfully analyzed his meteoric rise in modern venture capital. However Barber charts this extraordinary story with panache, with a style that is highly accessible to the general reader - but also credible for financial insiders. A must read."
--Gillian Tett, best-selling author of Anthrovision: How Anthropology Can Explain Business and Life, and Saving the Sun: Shinsei and the Battle for Japan's Future.

"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 Achilles Trap and Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power

About the Author

Lionel Barber is the former editor of the Financial Times. As editor, he interviewed many of the world's leaders in business and politics, including US Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, Russian president Vladimir Putin, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Barber has cowritten several books and has lectured widely on foreign policy, transatlantic relations, and economics. He also served on the Board of Trustees at the Tate and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. He graduated in 1978 from St Edmund Hall, Oxford University, with a joint honors degree in German and modern history and speaks French and German fluently.