Fraud, Edward J. Balleisen
Fraud, Edward J. Balleisen
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Fraud
An American History from Barnum to Madoff

Author: Edward J. Balleisen

Narrator: Tom Perkins

Unabridged: 19 hr 27 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/01/2017

Synopsis

The United States has always proved an inviting home for boosters, sharp dealers, and outright swindlers. Worship of entrepreneurial freedom has complicated the task of distinguishing aggressive salesmanship from unacceptable deceit, especially on the frontiers of innovation. At the same time, competitive pressures have often nudged respectable firms to embrace deception. As a result, fraud has been a key feature of American business since its beginnings. In this sweeping narrative, Edward Balleisen traces the history of fraud in America—and the evolving efforts to combat it—from the age of P. T. Barnum through the eras of Charles Ponzi and Bernie Madoff.

Starting with an early nineteenth-century American legal world of “buyer beware,” this unprecedented account describes the slow, piecemeal construction of modern regulatory institutions to protect consumers and investors, from the Gilded Age through the New Deal and the Great Society. It concludes with the more recent era of deregulation, which has brought with it a spate of costly frauds.

By tracing how Americans have struggled to foster a vibrant economy without enabling a corrosive level of fraud, this book reminds us that American capitalism rests on an uneasy foundation of social trust.

About Edward J. Balleisen

Edward J. Balleisen is associate professor of history and public policy and vice provost for Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke University. He is the author of Navigating Failure: Bankruptcy and Commercial Society in Antebellum America. Edward lives in Durham, North Carolina.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Ailith

Eh, more 2.5 than 3, but read it anyway, it's good for you. This book is just damn boring. It's written, I really don't know -- it's almost like a stream of news headlines. It's just fact after disjointed fact, that gains some cohesion towards the very very end, but eschews any investigation at all.......more

Goodreads review by Popup-ch

The book is explicitly American, which means that it misses out on the earlier history, such as the South Sea bubble, but given the connection with America, I would have expected to see at least a mention of John Law's Mississippi project. It also explicitly excludes individuals defrauding each other......more

Goodreads review by Andrew

An overview of different approaches the United States has taken towards combating fraud. They can generally be broken into caveat emptor, industry self-regulation (e.g. the Better Business Bureau), administrative bodies (FTC, FDA, CFPB), and judicial action. It's interesting to see how the country h......more

Goodreads review by Robin

How can a book talking about fraud be so unexciting? It comes across as comprehensive and thoughtful, but is handled in a pure historian style of literature. There’re lots of facts, serious analysis, and complex connections of business, law, ethics, politics and more. But there’s no spark, no style.......more

Goodreads review by Scott

(Audiobook). I found myself split on what to rate this book. If this rating scheme offered 1/2s, then I would give this a 2.5 rating. The topic is timely, especially with the Great Recession and all the stories of financial and internet fraud. What this work highlights is that for the entire history......more

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