All the Money in the World

September 3, 2007
Two accomplished New York writers, Bernstein (coeditor of The New York Times Practical Guide to Practically Everything) and Swan (coauthor of Pulitzer Prize-winning bio de Kooning) delve into the Forbes 400, that august group of rich folks ranked each year since 1982 by the business magazine of the same name. Not only businessmen and women, but sports stars, entertainment figures and wealthy heirs are profiled in fascinating detail, but the authors eschew the magazine's list format for a topical taxonomy that includes "blue collar billionaires," "West Coast money," "giving it away" and, naturally, "power and politics." Among dramatic stories of cutthroat competition, outrageous spending habits, skirmishes with the law and family feuds, intriguing observations abound, such as the admonishment that "as a rule, the Forbes 400 is not for the fainthearted," but those with the fearlessness and "winner-take-all outlook" to "turn convention on its head, or destroy an old business model in the interest of a greater good and larger profits." Sidebars cover tangential topics like trophy wives, palatial homes, the small Silicon Valley town (Woodside) that's the nation's sixth wealthiest, and blurbs from the original Forbes lists. Full of colorful characters and meticulous research, this book is inspired, insightful and lots of fun.

The rags-to-riches stories of America's wealthiest people, those on the "Forbes 400" list, are told in epic fashion by Rick Adamson. His voice has the quality of a movie voice-over, which keeps listeners engaged through the hundreds of anecdotes on millionaires and billionaires, bankruptcies of huge proportions, and listings of approximate net worth to the tune of billions of dollars. Listening to the biographies of the hundreds of people who have been on the "Forbes 400" since the list's inception is informative and often amusing. Adamson treats each vignette like an anecdote, told to a friend, with all the requisite pacing to build suspense. M.R. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine