THE RICH AND HOW THEY GOT THAT WAY

A meditation on the history of wealth as personified by the most avaricious men and women of all time.

Of all the species on Earth, writes Wall Street Journal reporter Crossen (Tainted Truth, 1994), only mankind accumulates wealth. Ancient rulers like Genghis Khan conquered kingdoms, stealing the wealth of entire civilizations. Popes and medieval burghers sold high offices and manipulated political conditions to farm the poor. Nineteenth-century British industrialists, and Bill Gates, capitalized on technology, dominated markets, and made a boodle before anyone else seemed to understand what was happening. In a breezy style (sometimes too breezy), with the air of an armchair historian, Crossen uses these personalities as milestones in a genealogy of the rich. In broad stokes, she is successful. Making a fortune was at first a zero-sum game—in order for one person to grow rich, someone else had to become, or stay, poor. As soon as surpluses developed, however, the game became more complicated. But when Crossen moves into particulars (as when she writes that the Great Depression moved people to change their perception of the rich and to think of the wealthy as producers “admired for much the same reason that primitive man was in awe of the warrior”) one desires more analysis—and evidence—of her claims. Her discussions on the importance of credit and debt in accumulating wealth are more nuanced and extensive, but there, too, one feels as if the book is caught between the personalities and the economic forces that shaped them. The chapter on John Law’s 18th-century adventure in currency speculation (which nearly bankrupted France) veers unsteadily between Law’s love of gambling and the unique system he pioneered. The reader is left with a half-vision of both. Financiers and historians will enjoy Crossen’s account. Laymen will find themselves reaching for their history and economic textbooks.

A broad, but often insubstantial, treatise on the affluent.