How Not to Get Rich: The Financial Misadventures of Mark Twain
Alan Pell Crawford
Oct 2017 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Peter Berkrot
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5 hr 43 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
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-quick 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 30,000 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.
About the author
Alan Pell Crawford is the author of Unwise Passions: A True Story of a Remarkable Woman-and the First Great Scandal of Eighteenth-Century America and a regular book reviewer for the Wall Street Journal.
A veteran of stage and screen, Peter Berkrot's career spans four decades, and his voice can be heard on television, radio, video games, and documentaries. He has been nominated for an Audie Award and has received a number of AudioFile Earphones Awards and starred reviews.
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