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Title details for A Disposition to Be Rich by Geoffrey C. Ward - Available

A Disposition to Be Rich

How a Small-Town Pastor's Son Ruined an American President, Brought on a Wall Street Crash, and Made Himself the Best-Hated Man in the United States

by Geoffrey C. Ward
Robertson Dean
Audiobook
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Ferdinand Ward was the Bernie Madoff of his generation—a supposed genius at making big money fast on Wall Street, who turned out to have been running a giant pyramid scheme that ultimately collapsed in one of the greatest financial scandals in American history. The son of a Protestant missionary and small-town pastor with secrets of his own to keep, Ward came to New York at twenty-one and in less than a decade, armed only with charm, energy, and a total lack of conscience, made himself the business partner of a former president of the United States and was widely hailed as the "Young Napoleon of Finance." In truth, he turned out to be a complete fraud, his entire life marked by dishonesty, cowardice, and contempt for anything but his own interests.
Drawing from thousands of never-before-examined family documents, Geoffrey C. Ward traces his great-grandfather's rapid rise to riches and fame, and his even more dizzying fall from grace. There are mistresses and mansions along the way; fast horses, crooked bankers, and corrupt New York officials; courtroom confrontations and six years in Sing Sing; and Ferdinand's desperate scheme to kidnap his own son to get his hands on the estate his late wife had left the boy. A Disposition to Be Rich is a great story about a classic American con artist, told with boundless charm and dry wit by one of our finest historians.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    May 1, 2012

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781452625393
      • File size: 409788 KB
      • Duration: 14:13:43

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Today's headlines are full of stories of huge losses by banks and investment schemes gone bad, but listening to the astonishing swindles of Ferdinand Ward, "the Bernie Madoff of the Gilded Age," puts the fascinatingly similar scandals into a historical context. Narrator Robertson Dean's smooth, deep voice takes us easily and directly into this biography of the author's great grandfather. Dean, as the author's voice, allows the facts to provide the sensationalism--little embellishment is needed. When quotes from letters or newspaper accounts are read, they're distinct from the narrative. The details of the swindles, bribes, and chicanery are drama enough. Engaging accounts of American history and culture (HORATIO'S DRIVE, A FIRST-CLASS TEMPERAMENT, and his collaborations with Ken Burns) are author Ward's metier. Here, Dean assures their success as an audiobook. R.F.W. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from March 12, 2012
      Like a great 19th-century novel, this is a mordantly entertaining account of the author’s great-grandfather Ferdinand Ward, whose stock brokerage collapsed spectacularly in 1885 after swindling Ulysses S. Grant and other luminaries out of millions. Ward, a historian and Ken Burns collaborator, weaves character defects and family conflicts into a social panorama, probing Ferdinand’s loathsome, beguiling personality: the youthful charm that mesmerized Wall Street graybeards; the feelings of self-righteousness, entitlement, and whiny victimhood inherited from his missionary parents (but without their restraining moralism); the omnivorous greed that turned his post–Sing Sing Prison life into an endless scheme to wheedle, con, and sue money out of everyone he knew. (He even kidnapped his own son to get his wife’s inheritance.) Ward, winner of an NBCC award and the Francis Parkman Prize for A First-Class Temperament, narrates a rollicking financial picaresque, but infuses it with psychological depth; Ferdinand’s frauds are a tangle of personal betrayals that implicate his family as they agonize over how much of his untrustworthiness they should reveal to outsiders. The result is a fascinating study of the Victorian moral economy veering toward bankruptcy. Photos. Agent: Carl Brandt, Brandt and Hochman.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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