Ex-Goldman banker to release revealing memoir Hachette Book Group Goldman Sachs has dealt with a lot of bad publicity lately, including the conviction of a former board member in a government investigation into insider trading and a $550 million settlement with regulators over charges of securities fraud linked to mortgage investments. But it was a scathing Op-Ed article in the New York Times from a former Goldman employee titled "Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs" that grabbed the most headlines. In his article, Greg Smith, a former executive director at the investment bank, accused Goldman of routinely ripping off its clients and described the bank's culture as "toxic and destructive," putting profit ahead of the interests of its clients. Now Smith's memoir is set to be published on Oct. 22. Titled "Why I Left Goldman Sachs," the book will "pick up where his Op-Ed left off," according to the memoir's publisher Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group. "Smith describes in page-turning detail how the most storied investment bank on Wall Street went from taking iconic companies like Ford, Sears, and Microsoft public to becoming a "vampire squid" that referred to its clients as "muppets" and paid the government a record half-billion dollars to settle SEC charges," the publisher writes in blurb on its website. Smith will show "the evolution of Wall Street into an industry riddled with conflicts of interest and a profit-at-all-costs mentality: a perfectly rigged game at the expense of the economy and the society at large," Grand Central said. David Wells, a spokesman for Goldman, downplayed the book's importance. "Every day, some young professional, after a decade in a postcollegiate job, reassesses his or her career and decides to move on and do something else," he said in a statement e-mailed to NBCNews.com. Others can better judge whether Mr. Smith's particular career transition is of unique interest. Click here to check on shares of Goldman.