He swindled and smooth-talked his way into many opportunities—Harvard, the Flemings firm in London, Czech government circles—but it was Viktor Kožený’s bold and buccaneering scams that ultimately earned him the moniker “the Pirate of Prague.” Concealed beneath the Czech-born financier’s Gatsby-like persona (he threw extravagant parties in Aspen, owned a jet and a yacht, and built a $14 million pool at his Bahamas estate) was a web of precarious business dealings. In The Pirate of Prague, journalists Joe Nocera and Peter Elkind tell Kožený’s story, from his upbringing in Communist Czechoslovakia to his ill-fated master plan to purchase Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil company—a plan that suckered Wall Street’s most respected investors out of almost half a billion dollars.
—Paulina Prosnitz