All the Money in the World

Chapter 1Education, Intelligence, DriveThe notion of a good education as a ticket to the good life is deeply ingrained in the American psyche. Studies show over and over that there s a strong correlation between schooling and future earnings. It s a central tenet of billionaire Michael Bloomberg, New York City s 108th mayor, who has taken on the city s failing education system with gusto. Nothing is more important than education, says Bloomberg, so you re seeing the better educated getting the greater percentage of the wealth. And education is only going to become more important as we get into a more and more complex world. If this is so, how did David Murdock, son of a traveling salesman and a high-school dropout, amass a net worth of more than $4 billion in real-estate development and the food business? What transformed onetime welfare recipient Tim Blixseth, a high-school grad, into a billionaire timber lord?And what turned eighteen-year-old Thomas Flatley, who left Ireland with $32 in his pocket and no advanced education, into a $1.3 billion real- estate mogul? One thing is certain: It was not the hallowed halls of an ivy-covered university.For members of the Forbes 400, who have reached the financial apex, you would expect a basic requisite to be a college diploma, if not an MBA assuming, of course, they didn t inherit their riches. Yet Murdock, Blixseth, and Flatley all made fortunes with little formal schooling. And they aren t alone. Four of the five richest Americans on the 2006 Forbes 400 list software king Bill Gates, casino impresario Sheldon Adelson, Oracle s Larry Ellison, and Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, whose combined net worth in 2006 came to a staggering $110 billion are all college dropouts. The only university grad among the top five is America s second-richest man, genius investor Warren Buffett, who graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1949. In fact, in any given year over the past twenty- five years, about 10 percent of the Forbes

PETER W. BERNSTEIN and ANNALYN SWAN are veteran journalists and editors who between them have worked at U.S. News & World Report, Time, Newsweek, and Fortune magazines over the last twenty-five years. Bernstein is the co-editor of The New York Times Practical Guide to Practically Everything and editor of The Ernst & Young Tax Guide. Bernstein and Swan are cofounders of ASAP Media, which helped produce Secrets of the Code: The Unauthorized Guide to the Mysteries Behind the Da Vinci Code. They live in New York City.

Full of rags-to-riches stories and colorful anecdotes that make it ... compulsively readable.   The New York Times

Cogent, fluid, encyclopedic in its detail, this book touches on almost every aspect of getting and spending [money].   International Herald Tribune

A well written and edited compilation of facts and anecdotes..... Gilt inevitably produces guilt.   Providence Journal

All the Money in the World is not just scholarly; it's also highly readable and provocative.   BookPage