The Price of Experience - by Randall Sullivan (Paperback)

About the Book

"The shocking story of Joe Hunt and the downfall of the Billionaire Boys Club -- from social investing group to Ponzi scheme to murderers -- told in a propulsive narrative by Randall Sullivan, now updated with a new afterword and soon to be a CNN miniseries When it first came to the public's attention in the fall of 1986, the story of the Billionaire Boys Club and its leader, Joe Hunt, a young man labeled a "yuppie Charles Manson" by the prosecutor was splashed across headlines and TV screens throughout the nation. The story of rich kids, flagrant excess, and multiple murders fascinated the American public, but deeper truths lay buried beneath. The saga was so complex that neither its scope nor its implications could be clearly discerned--that is, until The Price of Experience was published in 1996. A scholarship student with a strange father and a mysterious background, Joe was socially shunned at the ultra-elite Harvard School in Los Angeles. By age twenty, however, Joe had made and lost $14 million on Chicago's commodities exchange. Back in L.A., he dazzled former classmates with his power and confidence, assembling them into the BBC Consolidated of North America, Inc. - part corporate empire and part private social club. Joe convinced the children of L.A.'s most powerful families that all the wealth, status, and power in the world was theirs for the taking. They gave him their trust funds and a loyalty he transformed into cultish devotion. Hunt and the BBC became the talk of L.A. - not only for the meteoric rise that brought them control of more than $100 million in assets, but for the grisly murders connected to the group. As the group's deadly momentum increased and its business dealings spun out of control, BBC members began to talk, and eventually Hunt and four others were arrested on two counts of murder. In this utterly gripping narrative, award-winning journalist Randall Sullivan finally revealed the whole story. Now, in the new afterword, he returns to Joe Hunt--who has now been in prison for almost forty years--and recounts the fates of his accomplices. This is a landmark true-crime book with a diabolical, but almost irresistibly seductive, genius at its center." --Amazon.

Book Synopsis

"Sullivan has done what every aspiring true crime writer hopes to do: He has crossed the line from titillation into cultural history."--Los Angeles Times

The shocking story of Joe Hunt and the downfall of the Billionaire Boys Club -- from social investing group to Ponzi scheme to murderers -- told in a propulsive narrative by Randall Sullivan, now updated with a new afterword and soon to be a CNN miniseries

When it first came to the public's attention in the fall of 1986, the story of the Billionaire Boys Club and its leader, Joe Hunt, a young man labeled a "yuppie Charles Manson" by the prosecutor was splashed across headlines and TV screens throughout the nation.

The story of rich kids, flagrant excess, and multiple murders fascinated the American public, but deeper truths lay buried beneath. The saga was so complex that neither its scope nor its implications could be clearly discerned--that is, until The Price of Experience was published in 1996.

A scholarship student with a strange father and a mysterious background, Joe was socially shunned at the ultra-elite Harvard School in Los Angeles. By age twenty, however, Joe had made and lost $14 million on Chicago's commodities exchange. Back in L.A., he dazzled former classmates with his power and confidence, assembling them into the BBC Consolidated of North America, Inc. - part corporate empire and part private social club. Joe convinced the children of L.A.'s most powerful families that all the wealth, status, and power in the world was theirs for the taking. They gave him their trust funds and a loyalty he transformed into cultish devotion. Hunt and the BBC became the talk of L.A. - not only for the meteoric rise that brought them control of more than $100 million in assets, but for the grisly murders connected to the group. As the group's deadly momentum increased and its business dealings spun out of control, BBC members began to talk, and eventually Hunt and four others were arrested on two counts of murder.

In this utterly gripping narrative, award-winning journalist Randall Sullivan finally revealed the whole story. Now, in the new afterword, he returns to Joe Hunt--who has now been in prison for almost forty years--and recounts the fates of his accomplices. This is a landmark true-crime book with a diabolical, but almost irresistibly seductive, genius at its center.

Review Quotes

"A classic study of the sociopathic personality."--Washington Post

"Sullivan . . . tells a story of sociopathic greed, pie-eyed gullibility and sheer incompetence of criminals and of their lawyers and prosecutors . . . the pages seem to turn themselves."--Boston Globe

"A tour-de-force . . . Sullivan's reportage is extraordinary, his narrative enthralling."--Rolling Stone

"Sullivan's book will be the landmark true-crime book of this decade."--Cleveland Plain Dealer

"A thoroughly documented and brilliantly told tale that provides a provocative commentary on the high cost of greed and ambition."--Euguene Register-Guard

"A masterful meditation on true crime and L.A. in the 1980s."--Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"Sullivan's riveting tale is amazingly detailed and artfully presented . . . You can hardly turn the pages fast enough. This is contemporary history, brilliantly written."--Playboy

"Sullivan's study of the so-called Billionaire Boys Club and its sociopathic leader, Joe Hunt, offers a remarkable array of elaborate deceptions and double crosses, all bound together in a gripping narrative."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"[An] exceptionally captivating narrative . . . Thoroughly researched and compulsively readable, an essential entry in the true-crime canon."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"This is a true-crime book that truly transcends the genre."--Library Journal (starred review)

"Compelling, masterfully written . . . destined to become a bestseller and a classic of the true-crime genre."--Booklist (starred review)

About the Author

Randall Sullivan was a contributing editor to Rolling Stone for over twenty years. He is the author of Graveyard of the Pacific, Dead Wrong, The Price of Experience, LAbyrinth, The Miracle Detective, and Untouchable. His work has been published in, among many other places, Wired, Esquire, Outside, Men's Journal, Washington Post, and the Guardian. He lives in Oregon.