The Rich & How They Got That Way: How the Wealthiest People of All Times – from Genghis Khan to Bill Gates – Made their Fortunes
According to an old saying, the rich are different from you and me because they have more money. According to Wall Street Journal senior editor Cynthia Crossen, the very rich are different because they often cross into unknown territory to obtain their great wealth–and regularly presage significant changes in society and culture while doing so. Crossen profiles 10 of these notable magnates in The Rich and How They Got That Way, focusing on a truly unorthodox assortment from a thousand-year peri
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Is anyone rich remotely interesting?,
In this book, Cynthia Crossen takes us on a quick jog with many diversions through the careers of some of the most stupendously wealthy people who have ever lived. It begins with the likes of Genghis Khan and ends, predictably enough, with Bill Gates.
Crossen is an FT journalist and the result of this is that the book has all the pros and cons you would expect from a series of long articles written by a journalist. The pros: it zips along, is neatly packaged and she has a nice turn of phrase from time to time. The cons: there is very little real insight and the padding is blatant. I would bet my mortgage that Crossen turned out a very good feature article comparing Gates to some earlier rich people and someone said ‘hey you should make a book out of this’. It would have been better as the feature.
The main trouble with the book is two-fold. First, there is Crossen’s constant lurching between the lives of the people profiled to some general observations, which may or may not have anything to do with them and which often gets rather aggravating. Second, well, it does seem that the very, very rich are generally profoundly uninteresting people and the padding is often necessary to make anything much out of their stories.
Of old, it was literally impossible to make a serious fortune except through the brutal wielding of power. Those who had one (Genghis Khan, etc.) achieved it and held on to it by the exercise of overwhelming force, knowing that they could equally well lose it the same way. Only with the Industrial Revolution did accumulating riches in any other way become merely very difficult. Richard Arkwright, designer of the most succesful industrial spinning machine and factory owner, is perhaps the first of the subjects on whom much real light is shed.
Then again, Arkwright comes across as a sour, nasty little man who knew all about barging his way to wealth and not a lot about enjoying it. Perhaps that’s just the way it is. Even now, Bill Gates clearly loves the power far more than the money; he hardly ever stops working long enough to enjoy his ludicrous techno-mansion and only got into philanthropy because of the perception that it was the done thing among his peers. Hardly any of those featured in this book seriously enjoyed their wealth, but none would stop accumulating it simply because they had way more than they knew what to do with.
It is not Cynthia Crossen’s fault that her subjects (all men bar one) and how they achieved what they did are really not worth a book like this. Except, of course, that she did choose to write one. Alexander Pope, who she quotes early on, said it best 200 years ago: “God shows how little He cares for riches by whom He bestows them on”. Amen.
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