{"product_id":"2940170168415","title":"A Disposition to Be Rich: How a Small-Town Pastor's Son Ruined an American President, Brought on a Wall Street Crash, and Made Himself the Best-Hated Man in the United States","description":"Ferdinand Ward was the Bernie Madoff of his generation-a supposed genius at making big money fast on Wall Street, who turned out to have been running a giant pyramid scheme 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 only with charm, energy, and a total lack of conscience, made himself the business partner of a 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDrawing from thousands of never-before-examined family documents, 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, 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. \u003cspan style=\"font-style: italic;\"\u003eA Disposition to Be Rich\u003c\/span\u003e is a great story about a classic American con artist, told with boundless charm and dry wit by one of our finest historians.","brand":"Tantor Audio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47117129515248,"sku":"2940170168415","price":20.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940170168415_p0.jpg?v=1763703672","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940170168415","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}