1300 187 187
Ferdinand Ward was the greatest swindler of the Gilded Age. Through his unapologetic villainy, he bankrupted Ulysses S. Grant and ran roughshod over the entire world of finance. Now, his compelling, behind-the-scenes story is told-told by his great-grandson, award-winning historian Geoffrey C. Ward.
Ward was the Bernie Madoff of his day, a supposed genius at making big money fast on Wall Street who turned out to have been running a giant pyramid scheme-one that ultimately collapsed in one of the greatest financial scandals in American history. The son of a Protestant missionary and small-town pastor with secrets of his own to keep, Ward came to New York at twenty-one and in less than a decade, armed with charm, energy, and a total lack of conscience, made himself the business partner of the former president of the United States and was widely hailed as the "Young Napoleon of Finance." In truth, he turned out to be a complete fraud, his entire life marked by dishonesty, cowardice, and contempt for anything but his own interests.
Drawing from thousands of family documents never before examined, Geoffrey C. Ward traces his great-grandfather's rapid rise to riches and fame and his even more dizzying fall from grace. There are mistresses and mansions along the way; fast horses and crooked bankers and corrupt New York officials; courtroom confrontations and six years in Sing Sing; and Ferdinand's desperate scheme to kidnap his own son to get his hands on the estate his late wife had left the boy. Here is a great story about a classic American con artist, told with boundless charm and dry wit by one of our finest historians.
""A Disposition to Be Rich "is a special accomplishment . . . After Ferdinand De Wilton Ward Jr. became notorious as a Gilded Age financial schemer of rare weaselly ingenuity, his picture appeared in a manual of phrenology. The shape of his "low-top head, very broad from side to side," was said to explain why Ward had shown the "Secretiveness, Cunning, Acquisitiveness, Destructiveness" to bilk investors, shame and bankrupt a former president and try to kidnap his own son . . . It took a great-grandson of Ferdinand's, the prizewinning historian Geoffrey C. Ward, to write the scandal-filled but eminently fair book that airs this dirty laundry . . . A most peculiar labor of love."
--Janet Maslin, "The New York Times"
"Before Bernard Madoff, before Charles Ponzi, there was Ferdinand Ward . . . Based on troves of letters and other memorabilia that Mr. Ward patiently amassed over many years, "A Disposition to Be Rich" is actually a family chronicle of sorts, in which Ferdinand is by no means the most demented ancestor . . . [A] beguiling reminder that human nature doesn't change much from one Gilded Age to another, although each new con merchant brings fresh wrinkles to the racket."
--Edward Kosner, "The Wall Street Journal"
"A scoundrel and a celebrity, the embezzler Ferdinand Ward made headlines for 25 years. This work, the result of decades of research into family archives and conversations with Geoffrey Ward's grandfather, Ferd's son Clarence, often reads like fiction. What's as impressive as Ferd Ward's career was wayward is his great-grandson's powers of historical synthesis. . . . With a story like this one, no invention was necessary."
--Carlo Wolff, "Christian Science Monitor
"
"Like a great nineteenth century novel, this is a mordantly entertaining account of the author's great-grandfather Ferdinand Ward, whose stock brokerage collapsed spectacularly in 1885 after swindling Ulysses S. Grant and other luminaries out of millions . .i
ISBN: 9780679445302
ISBN-10: 0679445307
Audience:
General
Format:
Hardcover
Language:
English
Number Of Pages: 418
Published: 1st May 2012
Dimensions (cm): 24.2 x 16.9
x 4.0
Weight (kg): 0.88
9am - 4pm AEST, Monday - Friday
