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Fortune's Spear
- A Forgotten Story of Genius, Fraud, and Finance in the Roaring Twenties
- Narrated by: James Conlan
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
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Publisher's summary
A richly detailed Edwardian true crime story of an extraordinary fraud, full of parallels to contemporary financial upheavals, from Bernie Madoff to the 2008 global financial crash.
Gerard Lee Bevan was the black sheep of one of London's most respectable banking families. A high-living womanizer and upper-class shyster of almost pantomime proportions, he exploited a glittering range of social connections. After a long run of success in City dealings he perpetrated a massive fraud which ruined both the City Equitable Fire Insurance Company and his stockbroking firm, Ellis & Co. He fled the country and was eventually arrested, tried, and jailed. Based on new research, Martin Vander Weyer tells the story of a fraud of extraordinary proportions, perpetrated by an aristocratic Englishman from a seemingly impeccable background. Exploring exactly how Bevan managed it, he reconstructs in rich Edwardian detail the environment and characters of the day, as well as Bevan's desperate attempt at disguise and flight across Europe. With resonances in today's financial world, from the 2008 crash to the likes of fraudsters such as Bernard Madoff, this compelling true crime tale offers a fascinating glimpse into a bygone financial world.
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Story
In The Hellhound of Wall Street, Michael Perino recounts in riveting detail the 1933 hearings that put Wall Street on trial for the Great Crash. Never before in American history had so many financial titans been called to account before the public, and they had come within a few weeks of emerging unscathed. By the time Ferdinand Pecora, a Sicilian immigrant and former New York prosecutor, took over as chief counsel, the investigation had dragged on ineffectively for nearly a year and was universally written off as dead....
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Great Story
- By Lynn on 03-22-11
By: Michael Perino
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The Wizard of Lies
- Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust
- By: Diana B. Henriques
- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 16 hrs
- Unabridged
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Who is Bernie Madoff, and how did he pull off the biggest Ponzi scheme in history? These questions have fascinated people ever since the news broke about the respected New York financier who swindled his friends, relatives, and other investors out of $65 billion. Many have speculated about what must have happened, but no reporter has been able to get the full story - until now. Diana B. Henriques of the New York Times has written the definitive book on the man and his scheme.
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The best of 3 madoff books
- By Angela willis on 03-18-13
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The Rockefellers
- By: Peter Collier, David Horowitz
- Narrated by: Michael Anthony
- Length: 30 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Against a richly detailed backdrop of history, the story of this unique American family unfolds. It begins with John D. Rockefeller Sr., who amassed a fortune amid the muck and disorder of the Pennsylvania oil fields and left his son to deal with the public outcry.
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Too Long
- By Rohit on 05-25-07
By: Peter Collier, and others
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The Bettencourt Affair
- The World's Richest Woman and the Scandal That Rocked Paris
- By: Tom Sancton
- Narrated by: Amanda Carlin
- Length: 13 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Heiress to the nearly 40-billion-dollar L’Oréal fortune, Liliane Bettencourt was the world’s richest woman and the 14th wealthiest person. But her gilded life took a dark yet fascinating turn in the past decade. At 94, she was embroiled in what has been called the Bettencourt Affair, a scandal that dominated the headlines in France. Why? It’s a tangled web of hidden secrets, divided loyalties, frayed relationships, and fractured families, set in the most romantic city - and involving the most glamorous industry - in the world.
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A Juicy Chronicle
- By Jean on 10-24-17
By: Tom Sancton
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Nazi Billionaires
- The Dark History of Germany's Wealthiest Dynasties
- By: David de Jong
- Narrated by: Michael David Axtell
- Length: 11 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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A groundbreaking investigation of how the Nazis helped German tycoons make billions off the horrors of the Third Reich and World War II—and how America allowed them to get away with it.
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Good but flawed
- By I. M. Rightwriter on 07-11-23
By: David de Jong
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Meet You in Hell
- Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership that Transformed America
- By: Les Standiford
- Narrated by: John H. Mayer
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Here is history that reads like fiction: the riveting story of two founding fathers of American industry, Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, and the bloody steelworkers' strike that transformed their fabled partnership into a furious rivalry. Author Les Standiford begins at the bitter end, when the dying Carnegie proposes a final meeting after two decades of separation. Frick's reply: "Tell him that I'll meet him in hell."
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an extended journalistic tour
- By D. Littman on 06-08-05
By: Les Standiford
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The Summit
- Bretton Woods, 1944: J. M. Keynes and the Reshaping of the Global Economy
- By: Ed Conway
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 14 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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The meeting of world leaders at Bretton Woods in 1944 was the only time countries from around the world agreed to overhaul the structure of the international monetary system. The system they set up presided over the longest, strongest, and most stable period of growth the world economy has ever seen.
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Big insights, crisp and clear
- By Philo on 09-14-16
By: Ed Conway
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The King of Content
- Sumner Redstone’s Battle for Viacom, CBS, and Everlasting Control of His Media Empire
- By: Keach Hagey
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Sumner Murray Redstone, once feared as the “mad genius” of media who would dump his CEOs for mere wobbles in his companies’ stock price, had built one of the world’s greatest media empires through a series of audacious takeovers constructed to ensure that he always maintained control. Today he controls 80 percent of the voting shares of both Viacom and CBS, meaning that on a whim he could replace the entire boards of two public companies with a combined value of $40 billion.
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Feels biased. Well researched, but not engaging.
- By Anonymous User on 04-03-19
By: Keach Hagey
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Taking on the Trust
- The Epic Battle of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller
- By: Steve Weinberg
- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Long before the rise of mega-corporations like Wal-Mart and Microsoft, Standard Oil controlled the oil industry with a monopolistic force unprecedented in American business history. Undaunted by the ruthless power of its owner, John D. Rockefeller, a fearless and ambitious reporter named Ida Minerva Tarbell confronted the company known simply as "The Trust".
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Annoying Narrator
- By Nate on 04-03-15
By: Steve Weinberg
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Too Good to Be True
- The Rise and Fall of Bernie Madoff
- By: Erin Arvedlund
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 12 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Erin Arvedlund, the financial reporter who questioned the amazing returns of Bernie Madoff's hedge funds way back in 2001, traces the life of the infamous swindler and addresses the tough questions surrounding the collapse of his Ponzi scheme.
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Doesn't add much more that a lot of details.
- By Robert on 11-07-10
By: Erin Arvedlund
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The Bank That Lived a Little
- Barclays in the Age of the Very Free Market
- By: Philip Augar
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 15 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Based on unparalleled access to those involved, and told with compelling pace and drama, The Bank That Lived a Little is the story of one of the most familiar names on the British high street since Big Bang in 1986. Philip Augar describes in detail three decades of boardroom intrigue driven by ruthless ambition, grandiose dreams and a desire for wealth. It is a tale of a struggle for long-term supremacy between rival strategies and their adherents.
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Global superstar bankers under light-touch gov
- By Philo on 12-21-18
By: Philip Augar
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Lords of Finance
- The Bankers Who Broke the World
- By: Liaquat Ahamed
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 18 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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It is commonly believed that the Great Depression that began in 1929 resulted from a confluence of events beyond any one person's or government's control. In fact, as Liaquat Ahamed reveals, it was the decisions made by a small number of central bankers that were the primary cause of the economic meltdown, the effects of which set the stage for World War II and reverberated for decades.
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interesting insight into interwar period!
- By Toru on 11-27-09
By: Liaquat Ahamed
What listeners say about Fortune's Spear
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Christopher
- 09-17-23
A pleasant way to spend a few hours
I came across this book by accident, and was strangely intrigued by the single extremely-negative review. The blurb sounded interesting to me, and I was curious if it was really so unredeemable bad. Since it's on Audible Plus, there was no risk to giving it a try. Turns out, this is a perfectly good book and just the kind of thing I was looking for at the time.
The author is a finance journalist, and has a different style than you'd expect from a historian or biography writer. It struck me as unusual, but not bad. For example, there are first-person asides more than usual, and the author also includes some hypothetical/imagined scenes, clearly labelled as imagined of course. I can see how some people might find this off-putting.
The underlying story is one that was interesting to me, as someone who loves books about fraud and financial crime for some reason. If you read British fiction from the era (20s-30s) there are tons of references to stock market frauds and schemes, and I had always wondered what the real story was. E.g., in Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, someone I forget had lost money in a West Australian gold mine, and in Edgar Wallace's The Just Men of Cordova one of the main characters is a pusher of amalgamation schemes that I felt sure had to be based in part on reality. This book is about one such case, and covers a bunch of others in passing—now I want a book about Horatio Bottomley! The case of Bevan in this book is fairly straightforward by modern standards, more of a Worldcom than an Enron. But I enjoyed it.
The narrator is fine, not distracting, but a British narrator would have fit better. In spite of the Dutch-sounding name, the author definitely writes like an Englishman, and an English reader might have added flair.
Overall, a recommended listen if you like this kind of thing, and definitely worth trying since it's on Audible Plus.
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Overall
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- The Louligan
- 08-30-14
REALLY AWFUL
What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?
If the subject matter was even remotely interesting. Gerard Bevan was a boring one-dimensional person. No wonder it is "a forgotten story..."!
What was most disappointing about Martin Vander Weyer’s story?
It's way too long and contains too much boring minutiae.
Would you listen to another book narrated by James Conlan?
If the book itself was worth listening to.
You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?
Not really.
Any additional comments?
I spent several hours trying to figure out why this book was even written. Finally I had to put myself out of my misery and just stop listening to it. To go on was like plunging a rusty fork in my eye! I see now why no one had rated or reviewed it on either Audible or Amazon. The only redeeming thing is if you suffer from insomnia. It WILL definitely put you to sleep!
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4 people found this helpful