Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
Ebook245 pages3 hours
How Not to Get Rich: The Financial Misadventures of Mark Twain
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
3/5
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About this ebook
“Crawford captures the energy, humor, and wide-eyed hope of America’s first ‘angel investor’ with wit and verve . . . A book that is worthy of Twain himself” (Dan Lyons, New York Times–bestselling author of Disrupted).
A Wealth Management Best Business Book of 2017
Mark Twain’s lifetime spans America’s era of greatest economic growth. And Twain was an active, even giddy, participant in all the great booms and busts of his time, launching himself into one harebrained get-rich scheme after another. But far from striking it rich, the man who coined the term “Gilded Age” failed with comical regularity to join the ranks of plutocrats who made this period in America notorious for its wealth and excess.
Instead, Twain’s mining firm failed, despite striking real silver. He ended up somehow owing money over his seventy thousand acres of inherited land. And his plan to market the mysteriously energizing coca leaves from the Amazon fizzled when no ships would sail to South America. Undaunted, Twain poured his money into the latest newfangled inventions of his time, all of which failed miserably.
In Crawford’s hilarious telling, the familiar image of Twain takes on a new and surprising dimension. Twain’s story of financial optimism and perseverance is a kind of cracked-mirror history of American business itself—in its grandest cockeyed manifestations, its most comical lows, and its determined refusal to ever give up.
“Light and frothy, this humorous biography is a lively read.” —Kirkus Reviews
A Wealth Management Best Business Book of 2017
Mark Twain’s lifetime spans America’s era of greatest economic growth. And Twain was an active, even giddy, participant in all the great booms and busts of his time, launching himself into one harebrained get-rich scheme after another. But far from striking it rich, the man who coined the term “Gilded Age” failed with comical regularity to join the ranks of plutocrats who made this period in America notorious for its wealth and excess.
Instead, Twain’s mining firm failed, despite striking real silver. He ended up somehow owing money over his seventy thousand acres of inherited land. And his plan to market the mysteriously energizing coca leaves from the Amazon fizzled when no ships would sail to South America. Undaunted, Twain poured his money into the latest newfangled inventions of his time, all of which failed miserably.
In Crawford’s hilarious telling, the familiar image of Twain takes on a new and surprising dimension. Twain’s story of financial optimism and perseverance is a kind of cracked-mirror history of American business itself—in its grandest cockeyed manifestations, its most comical lows, and its determined refusal to ever give up.
“Light and frothy, this humorous biography is a lively read.” —Kirkus Reviews
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Reviews for How Not to Get Rich
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
3/5
3 ratings1 review
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5How Noy to Get Rich is a financial biography of Twain; his writings are mentioned only in relation to his finances. A great nephew claimed that Twain "tried to be an Edison as well as a Shakespeare, and a few other great men besides" p. X. I was amazed to read how often and far Twain kept getting into debt, sometimes for an invention which did not pan out and sometimes for poor publishing decisions. (He was involved with publishing other people's books.) He went through both his and his wife's fortunes. He finally got a robber baron who liked his writing to manage his business affairs. Much of his income in his later years came from giving lectures. I enjoyed the first part of the book which discussed his experimenting in different fields prior to discovering himself as a writer. Mr. Crawford included a lot of humor there. Reading about his later financial difficulties and his stubbornness at not giving up when he was losing great sums of money on a particular venture got rather tiring in my opinion.
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How Not to Get Rich - Alan Pell Crawford
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