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|  | Author: Frank Partnoy
Publisher: PublicAffairs
List Price: $26.95
Buy New: $9.99
as of 11/22/2009 16:22 CST details
You Save: $16.96 (63%)
New (42) Used (21) from $7.37
Seller: book-a-lot
Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 21142
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.2 x 1
ISBN: 1586487434
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.1680924
EAN: 9781586487430
ASIN: 1586487434
Publication Date: April 13, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: SATISFACTION GUARANTEED! NEW Book! May have remainder mark. Most orders ship within 1 BUSINESS DAY with ORDER CONFIRMATION. Great Book at a Great Value!
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 11-12 of 12
 The book is a masterpiece... April 15, 2009
Robert A. G. Monks (Portland, ME United States)
20 out of 23 found this review helpful
Rare it is that a thousand page book is beguilingly compressed into a quarter of that length when the common practice is just the reverse. The book is a delight - from encountering a thirteen year old Greta Garbo; through the marvelously depicted co-optation of an independent accountant (through his wife); the seduction of the ambitious young man who wants to be partners with the grandees of Wall Street; the description of beautiful living and working spaces; the realities of finance and personality in inter war Europe; and - above all else - the absolute insistence of the buying public to be allowed to participate in getting rich. Whether it is the slot machines or Bernie Madoff's guaranteed 8%, the packaging of oversees properties or the perfection of the tulip bulb, the dot com bubble or the limitless rise in residential real estate values, the ages have probably never produced as coherent, well organized and effective a promoter as Frank Partnoy's Ivar Krueger.
The book is a masterpiece. When you read, you will marvel at the persistence and ingenuity of the research that lies behind the words. Possibly, the finest single thread is description of the way in which Krueger enlisted the loyalty of people essential to him. Yes, some he bought, but most - he beguiled. He gave people a sense of participating in something that gave them an excuse to have an expanded view of themselves. This is not a costless process and Krueger spent much solitary, and - one suspects - depressed time, time re energizing this capacity to give others a sense of being greater than they otherwise might have been. This is a story of great coherence, of childhood friends embarking together into the great world, of young professionals becoming industry models, of businesses growing and conglomerations being assembled [ Certainly, I would have liked at least another 100 pages about this!}, of finance ministers and prime ministers trying to finance public obligations.
In brief, it is a great story - in light of its tragic conclusion, we need ask ourselves who is the hero and who is the thief. Partnoy recites step by step how Ivar Krueger went to a printer in Stockholm and had Italian Debt Instruments printed which he proceeded rather carelessly to sign. So. There is no suspense. And yet, there is so much else, there were real companies, real values. People lost more money in uncontroversial holdings. During the last ten years in America, we have witnessed the great industrial conglomerates being assembled - the assembler was adjudged a criminal and is in jail; we have witnessed the great financial conglomerates being assembled - the assembler is perhaps less of a hero than he once was, but the public is coughing up tens of billions of dollars to staunch the pollution; we have daily smiling reminders of the purposeful defrauding of thousands of individuals at a cost of $50 billion. Surely, we - citizens and customers - should have learned something. Partnoy's tale is perhaps the most skilful tale of the romance and the corruption of an able energy in attempting to be on top of the world.
"Everything in life is founded on confidence" Ivar Kreuger April 13, 2009
Dag Stomberg (St. Andrews, Scotland)
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
Sweden has given many interesting personalities. Ivar Kreuger has been
notorious, widely and unfavorably known over many decades.
Now a book has been written by Frank Partnoy that is definitive in its
scope and very readable, expressing a clarity of the facts with an
intuitive understanding of this extraordinary story of a man.
Kreuger was seen as a business titan of the period from 1922 to 1932.
This book is of a time all too familiar now!
Showing reviews 11-12 of 12
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