Product Description

Published to coincide with the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Forbes 400, All the Money in the World, the work of a team of prominent editors and business writers, goes behind the celebrated list to paint a vivid and revealing portrait of the wealthiest Americans of the past quarter century. Abundantly anecdotal, with insights gleaned from original research, interviews with Forbes 400 members, and never-before-compiled data, it is filled with illuminating “infographics”—tables, sidebars, factoids. The book shows how the superrich succeed, how fortunes are made in various industries, and how, once made, they are saved, enhanced, and sometimes squandered.

From Wall Street to the West Coast, from blue-collar billionaires to blue-blood fortunes, from the Google guys to hedge fund honchos, All the Money in the World gives us the lowdown on, among other things: the all-time richest Americans, who made and lost the most money in the past twenty-five years, the fields and industries that have produced the greatest wealth, the biggest risk takers, the most competitive players, the most wasteful family feuds, the trophy wives, the most conspicuous consumers, the biggest art collectors, the most and least generous philanthropists.

Produced in collaboration with Forbes magazine, All the Money in the World is a vastly entertaining, behind-the-scenes look at today’s Big Rich, a subject of enduring fascination to all Americans.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #273408 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-04
• Released on: 2007-09-04
• Format: Deckle Edge
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 432 pages

Features

• Hardback
• 396 pages

Amazon.com Review
In All the Money in the World, Peter W. Bernstein and Annalyn Swan--in conjunction with Forbes magazine--take an unprecedented and fascinating look at the lives, culture, and financial habits of the unbelievably rich. Examine these excerpted "infographics" and discover for yourself that they really are different...

Which colleges has the richest grads?	Who's richer: East or West?	The high (and low) cost of living well	The all-time richest Americans

From Publishers Weekly
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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
The Forbes 400, the now-legendary list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, was first published in Forbes magazine in 1982. To commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary, the authors, cofounders of ASAP Media, which helped produce Secrets of the Code: The Mysteries behind the Da Vinci Code (2004), have created this in-depth look at the more than 1,300 Americans who have made the cut. Far from being a mere celebration of ostentatiousness, this report not only uncovers a plethora of facts and figures about the superrich but also goes behind the numbers to study their personalities and psychology, in essence revealing what makes them tick. Billionaires that we know, love, and hate, such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Donald Trump, fill out much of these pages, yet some of the most interesting profiles come from unfamiliar names, such as Jon Huntsman (Huntsman Container Corporation), shipping magnate Daniel Ludwig, and Floyd Roger Hardesty (concrete and aircraft repair). Although providing enough charts, graphs, and comparisons to satisfy any statistician, and enough gossip on ruthlessness, risk-taking, family squabbles, and scandalous affairs to satisfy the rest of us, the authors probe that most uniquely human trait: the desire to succeed and accumulate wealth. Expect demand. Siegfried, David

Customer Reviews

Well-Executed and Helpful in Multiple Ways
I bouight this book partly on a whim and partly because a new non-profit a bunch of us have created, Earth Intelligence Network, is about to start fund-raising from the foundations. For the one page list of the top foundations and what they focus on, alone, I was fully satisfied.

However, and this was a very pleasant surprise, the book suggests that in the Forbes 400, average worth of those without a college degree is 5.96 billion, while those with a degree have a lesser averaage wealth of 3.14 billion. I have an extremely bright and talented who scorns most structured classes, and I am going to give him this book as a way of considering his options. I am certainly coming to believe that online education and "free universities" need to explode, and structured classroom learning reduced at the same time that all learning should become open books team learning, not competitive rote learning. This book actually reinforces that view.

The book opens by emphasizing that a great deal of the wealth today came about because of the equivalent of the Oklahoma land rush, the combination of President Reagan cutting taxes, the wireless "landgrab", and smart people, generally already rich, borrowing money to buy under-valued assets (in contrast to the subprime mess we are in now).

The book examines factors in success, and after luck or intuition it lists drive, a willingness to take risks, self-confidence, and even obessive attention to detail. A lack of ethics and a willingness to commit crimes against stockholders, employees, and the government are featured in perhaps 10% of the Forbes 400 caught and convicted, and I would speculate another 30% in gray areas. The book cites one person's view that a major recession is coming, and the public's perception of the super-rich as having gotten there by greed and abuse, a factor to be reckoned with in the near future.

Part I focuses on individuals, and we learn that three families, Buffet, Gates, and Walton, hold 14.5% of the total wealth represented in the Forbes 400 list.

Part II focuses on specific economic sectors where fortunes have been made.

Part III was the most interesting part for me, it focuses on how the super-rich spend their money. Heir and trophy wives, how to stalk and marry a billionaire, yachts (over 200 feeet long, the top ones being over 400 feet), helicopters at eleven million, art, competing for the America's cup, a multi-year cost, all quite interesting.

Best of all is the chapter on Giving It Away, and the table on page 278, listing 36 top givers and their interests.

Bottom line: I do not consider this a voyeur type of book, but rather a book that is enjoyable to read on a Sunday morning, and one that could spark useful reflections in both adults, and seniors in high school, or those in college. I regard this as a very fine gift, and will be passing my copy on to my oldest son.

Ten other recommendations (other than my own books):
Where Have All the Leaders Gone?
The Politics of Fortune: A New Agenda For Business Leaders
State of the World 2007: Our Urban Future (State of the World)
Within Our Means
The Money Culture
The Working Poor: Invisible in America
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
War on the Middle Class: How the Government, Big Business, and Special Interest Groups Are Waging War on the American Dream and How to Fight Back
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future - and What It Will Take to Win It Back
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming

A 25 Year Perspective on the Origins and Problems of Today's American Billionaires
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to earn, spend, and give away billions of dollars without having to think about reining in your whims? That's the way Bill Gates and many other billionaires live now. All the Money in the World takes a look at those who have appeared on the Forbes list of the 400 wealthiest Americans over the last 25 years to see how these billionaires got on the list, what kept them on the list, and what the consequences of their wealth have been for their lives and those of their families.

Malcolm Forbes started this list to show that wealth counts, not inherited position (as the social 400 in New York had once implied). The list has now reached a point of having become an icon in an age of remarkable wealth building. A good part of the book shows how the list itself is beginning to influence the behavior of people who do and don't want to be seen on the list.

The amount of information contained in this book is staggering. In addition to hundreds of vignettes about wealthy individuals and families, there are also lots of lists of who does the most of whatever (earn, spend, divorce, have children, give away money, or own yachts).

You might expect that such a book would glamorize billionaires, but that's not the case. The authors do their best to keep a little distance between the glitz of wealth and power and the reality of what kind of people these are. In many cases, you'll quickly decide you don't like certain people . . . and certainly wouldn't want to use them as a role model.

Other books on the wealthy tend to make them seem like they are superior in many ways, but that's not the reality as this book shows. I was particularly impressed to see that the book contained a discussion of how some piles of money are created by accidental factors. Of those who earned their own wealth (the majority), extreme risk taking was often rewarded when huge increases in prices turned poor cash flow into an asset-based bonanza.

Some of the factoids will fascinate you. Bill Gates had wealth in 2006 greater than the annual GDP of 11 African countries with a combined population of 226 people. The authors also adjust wealth over time by comparing it to GDP in the United States which allows you to compare Bill Gates to John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. Perhaps the most interesting factoid is that those without much education are worth a lot more money than those with a lot of education. Card players will be intrigued to find out that many fortunes were started from poker winnings.

For those who love gossip, some sections positively reek of gossip.

Here is how the book is organized:

Introduction

Part One: What It Takes

Chapter 1 -- Education, Intelligence, Drive
Chapter 2 -- Risk
Chapter 3 -- Luck and Timing
Chapter 4 -- Winning Is Everything

Part Two: Making It

Chapter 5 -- Blue-Collar Billionaires
Chapter 6 -- West Coast Money
Chapter 7 -- Entertainment and Media
Chapter 8 -- Beyond Wall Street

Part Three: Spending It

Chapter 9 -- Conspicuous Consumption
Chapter 10 -- Heirs
Chapter 11 -- Family Feuds
Chapter 12 -- Giving It Away
Chapter 13 -- Power and Politics

Afterword -- Money and Happiness

I have studied how billion-dollar businesses are created for many years, and have often surveyed wealthy entrepreneurs in that process. In addition, I try to stay up-to-date on what's going on with the wealthiest people as part of my studies for the 400 Year Project. But a great deal of the information in the book (about 30 percent) was new to me. If you are not so focused on the wealthy as I am, you'll probably find more than half of the book will be new to you.

The book is a pretty fast read if you skim over anecdotes you already know.

Have a rich experience!

The Very, Very Rich: Up Close and Personal
Who knew that the rich could be so addictive? Even if you're not the greatest fan of today's zillionaires, All the Money in the World is a fascinating insider's view of what makes them tick and how they get to the top. And, of course, there's the egregious excess that sometimes follows. The real stars are not the greedy, over-the-top hedge fund guys, however, but the up-by-the-bootstraps billionaires whose lives make for great reading.