Billionaire gossip at its best | All the Money in the World: How the Forbes 400 Make--and Spend--Their...

Interesting | All the Money in the World: How the Forbes 400 Make--and Spend--Their Fortunes

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	• All the Money in the World: How the Forbes 400 Make--and Spend--Their Fortunes Knopf, 2007 - 432 pages average customer review:based on 11 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

What it takes to become a Forbest 400 member;

I was particularly interested in Part One; 'What it Takes'. A fantastic chapter on Education, Intelligence, Drive, Risk, Luck & Timing. The essence is that 1) if you don't inherit money, you have to take a lot of risk and 2) not everybody can become a billionaire, but a billionaire can come from everywhere. Particularly interesting is that Forbes 400 types have often a different perception of risk and often sink their money into deals that are the opposite of what conventional wisdom deems a prudent investment.

Astonishing 70% of the Forbes 400 list in 2006 were self-made. A lot to learn on financial success incl. people like myself who never ever aim at become a billionaire.

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Billionaire gossip at its best

This book is similar to "Richistan" in nature in that it profiles many wealthy people and how they obtained and spend their wealth.
It's quite a bit more detailed in terms of comparisons, statistics, historical information than Richistan, however.
But again, if you are looking for explicit and detailed information of what you should and shouldn't do to obtain your own wealth you'll want to look elsewhere.
It does give examples of how some of the super rich got their money but that's a fairly small part of the book.
To summarize, the rich got rich by taking advantage of underserved markets by creating businesses, inheritance, finance deals, and sometimes just plain dumb luck.
If you want to know about other rich people and what you can do with your money once you have it then this is a good reference to have.

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Interesting

This was a satisfactory read, although if you are a diligent reader of Forbes and Fortune as well as WSJ and FT there probably won't be much in here you didn't already know. I did enjoy the sections on Family Feuds and Blue-collar Billionaires but got a bitter taste in my mouth while reading the Conspicuous Consumption section. All in all it was a decent book, and what you'll learn is that if you want to have billionaire status you need to have drive and determination as well as be a workaholic.

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Excellent Read about Wealthy People!

Very well written and researched. A good insight into the lives of the Forbes 400, how they got there and how they spend their money. Great book if you have a business that targets these people as customers!

I must say this book is also a lot better than those books about how to get rich, this book tells REAL stories. If you are thinking of buying this books have a look at the book RICHISTAN too. They go along very well together!

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A Fascinating Book on Wealth and the Superrich

I have always been fascinated with wealth, and have enjoyed reading about the Forbes 400 for years. "All The Money In The World: How The Forbes 400 Make - And Spend - Their Fortunes" by Peter W. Bernstein and Annalyn Swan was an extremely fascinating and enjoyable read. If you are interested in the superrich, this book paints a revealing portrait of the wealthiest of the rich and shows how they succeed, how fortunes are made in various industries, and how, once made, they are saved, enhanced, and sometimes squandered.

This thoroughly researched book provides abundant anecdotes and insights as well as compiled data in illuminating tables, sidebars, and factoids. Did you know that Bill Gates comes in as the thirteenth richest American if you converted past riches into today's dollars? (Actually 2006 dollars when the book was being researched) John D. Rockefeller's wealth would be 305.3 billion dollars when converted to 2006 dollars. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett combined don't make a third of that. Did you know that in 2006 the average net worth of 400 members without a college degree exceeded the average net worth of those with a degree by a considerable margin - $2.8 billion? That's partly due, of course, to the Gates factor. Did you know there were 97 immigrants from 34 different countries that made the Forbes list over the last twenty-five years? The book is filled with so many interesting stories and facts.

The book also shows that money is not everything. The superrich have problems just like everyone else, and sometimes those problems are at a greater scale. So while this book describes those that may seem unobtainable to most, you also realize that they are still people just like everyone else. Well, maybe not like everyone else, but they are still people.

Chapters include:

Part One: What It Takes
1. Education, Intelligence, Drive
2. Risk
3. Luck - and Timing
4. Winning Is Everything

Part Two: Making It
5. Blue - collar Billionaires
6. West Coast Money
7. Entertainment and Media
8. Beyond Wall Street

Part Three: Spending It
9. Conspicuous Consumption
10. Heirs
11. Family Feuds
12. Giving It Away
13. Power and Politics

Afterword: Money and Happiness

Appendix: The Forbes 400, 1982-2006

This is a vastly entertaining behind the scenes look at the superrich. I found it fascinating to read about those billionaires I was familiar with, but also those extremely wealthy that you never really hear about. It made me feel good to read about the money these Forbes 400 members give away to help others, and then sometimes shake my head wondering when you see what some of these people spend money on. Forget about the enormous cost of purchasing a yacht, but think about the upkeep running into tens of millions of dollars a year and you may wonder as I did why Paul Allen wants to own two of the top ten U.S. owned yachts. Octopus at 414 feet is number two, and Tatoosh at 301 feet 8 inches is number four. If you are wondering, Larry Ellison's Rising Sun at 452 feet 8 inches is number 1, and no one knows who owns number seven's Laurel at 240 feet and number nine's charter yacht Reverie at 229 feet, seven inches.

If you want to read an extremely interesting and fascinating book about wealth and those that have accumulated the most of it, read "All The Money In The World." Besides being entertained, you just might learn some insights to help you accumulate more wealth yourself. After all, you will see that if these people can do, so can you or anyone else.

Reviewed by Alain Burrese, author of Hard-Won Wisdom From the School of Hard Knocks and the dvds: Hapkido Hoshinsul, Streetfighting Essentials, Hapkido Cane, the Lock On Joint Locking Essentials series and articles including a regular column on negotiation for The Montana Lawyer. Alain Also wrote a series of articles called Lessons From The Apprentice.

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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.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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