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	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Categories
Politics & government

A DISPOSITION TO BE RICH

Geoffrey C. Ward

Narrative historical non-fiction that reads like fiction about a Bernie Madoff-like figure who swindled the famous – including Ulysses S. Grant! – in the 19th century.

The author’s portrait of his great grandfather Ferdinand Ward tells the story of a 19th Century financial conman who is best known for bankrupting Ulysses S. Grant, the Civil War hero and American President. Ward’s family was highly religious and spent some years trying to bring the Protestant faith to India, without great success. Ferdinand’s career was a revolt against that strict upbringing. The book’s description of the closed religious society of upstate New York is compelling, and the story of Ferdinand’s manipulations entertaining and reminiscent of some of our modern financial bad characters.

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Book Published 2012-05-01 by Knopf

Comments

“Imagine that Bernie Madoff was in business with former President Dwight Eisenhower and that after stealing millions from Warren Buffett, Madoff left Ike with only $80 to his name. That's what Ferd Ward did to Ulysses S. Grant, but it only begins to describe the perfidy of the greatest swindler of the 19th Century. Now Ward's great grandson, one of America's finest historians, has redeemed the Ward family name with this wry and engrossing tale of Gilded Age greed that resonates powerfully in our own time.”

What’s also remarkable about this book is the author’s utter condemnation of his own great-grandfather as a sociopath without redeeming virtue…Like [Nathaniel] Hawthorne, he’s interested not only in character but also in the consequences of one’s actions, and so he can vividly exorcise at last, without excuse or apology, his reprobate forbear.

“Before Charles Ponzi, before Bernie Madoff, there was Ferdinand Ward, the greatest and most audacious schemer of them all. Geoffrey Ward, his great grandson, had rare access to private papers, accounts, court documents, and the letters of this evil, self-justifying, mesmerizing sociopath, who went from a poor minister’s son to the swindling partner of President Ulysses S. Grant. This is a superb, exciting, beautifully written book. I couldn’t put it down. You won’t either.”

A deeply researched and elegant narrative…The details, drawn from a cache of private documents long stored unread in a safe, make for a perversely fascinating read.

Like a great 19th-century novel, this is a mordantly entertaining account of the author’s great-grandfather, whose stock brokerage collapsed spectacularly in 1885 after swindling Ulysses S. Grant and other luminaries out of millions. Ward narrates a rollicking financial picaresque, but infuses it with psychological depth. The result is a fascinating study of the Victorian moral economy veering toward bankruptcy.”

"Geoffrey Ward has written an astonishing book. Readers will not want to put down his fast-paced account of how his great grandfather, “The Best-Hated Man in the United States," brought U.S. Grant to ruin. He leaves no doubt that Ferdinand Ward of Grant and Ward was a scoundrel, but, in this riveting biography, he also raises the fascinating question of why so many Americans in the Gilded Age were so eager to become dupes.”

No dramatization could match the richness of detail and command of sources that Ward provides here. Each footnote is a miniature history in itself—coming together in a remarkably vivid and focused portrait of the age…A Gilded Age fable straight out of Mark Twain.