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The Trick

Why Some People Can Make Money and Other People Can't

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The Trick

By: William Leith
Narrated by: Rich Keeble
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Bloomsbury presents The Trick by William Leith, read by Rich Keeble.

Some people can make money. Other people can’t. It’s a thought that makes William Leith wake up in a cold sweat.

He doesn’t know why it makes him feel anxious. After all, money isn’t real. We created it. Humans did. It’s our masterpiece.

But the desire for it is killing us.

It is this dilemma that sets William Leith off on an adventure into the bizarre, morally dubious, yet highly desirable world of the mega-rich.

He spends several days with the real-life Wolf of Wall Street who, not content with his hundreds of millions, devised a fraud so he could make hundreds of millions more. He visits a Baroque mansion where a Russian half-billionaire lives alone with his butler. He tours the estate of Felix Dennis, the maverick tycoon who commissioned an avenue of statues to tell the story of his life. He flies to private islands on private jets, meets private men in private clubs, experiencing the dizzy highs of a life without limits – but all it does is give him crippling anxiety.

Throughout it all he asks himself: what makes these people wealthy? And how come I’m not?©2020 William Leith (P)2020 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Money Wolf
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Critic reviews

The Trick takes all of Leith’s writing habits – his mazy streams of consciousness (few writers are quite so enamoured of, or good at, watching themselves think) and his love of axiom – and, if anything, ups the ante... Hugely enjoyable (Tim Adams)
Part Hunter S. Thompson, part Montaigne: a blend of gonzo journalism and rambling reflection interspersed with learned references
Chummy, funny and genuinely interesting, The Trick has to be one of the best books about money around
Spectacular ... The Trick takes us on a fevered thrill ride through the heads of the richest people in the world, plus some of the most accomplished risk-takers, to answer the eternal question, why does money stick to thee, and not to me? (Aaron Brown, author of 'The Poker Face of Wall Street')
Most books about the uber-wealthy portray them either as superheroes to be unquestioningly admired or as obsessive psychopathic idiots. The joy of this book is how beautifully it walks the narrow line between the two (Rory Sutherland, author of Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense)
A superb book ... Leith has always been one of our best non-fiction writers and this is his crowning achievement (Praise for 'The Hungry Years', Jon Ronson)
As a memoir and as comedy, it succeeds beautifully ... As a confessional, it is pretty much a masterclass – frank, tough-minded, funny, generous (praise for 'The Hungry Years')
Resembles an expertly-paced stand-up routine ... Positively Izzard-esque (Praise for 'Bits of Me Are Falling Apart')
Leith offers a tour of his own frantic inner world, reflecting on a dizzying array of subjects ... These range from cowboys and gangsters to the feeding habits of chimpanzees. His metastasising anecdotes and revelations are deeply personal, often wilfully tangential and always thought-provoking
[Leith’s] passages about his multiple overlapping neuroses are touched by comic genius … Leith offers sharply comical observations about both the lure and absurdity of great wealth
All stars
Most relevant
The authors mind is a web of stories, thoughts and insights and here he weaves them together to great effect. Well read too.

Excellent; insightful and thought provoking

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The clear thinking section really pulls this together. An insight into how people think about money when they have it.

Great book, very interesting discussion.

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This is the most boring audio book I have ever listened to. It is pretty much the author regurgitating other peoples books you may as well read those. Don’t waste your time have ended up stopping 3/4s of the way through would have stopped earlier but was holding on to the hope it would have got better.

Snooze

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I found this audio book difficult to listen to; I tried several times from the beginning and couldn't get into it. For me, the author seemed to 'ramble' a lot - I don't know if this is intentional, but it takes up most of the content rather than the point of the book / the story itself. I really wanted to learn and understand exactly what this book said it did, but I sadly found it extremely difficult to get into and couldn't get past 90 mins - and I tried a few times too! I hope this review doesn't upset the author or narrator, but it is clearly not my style.

Just a load of monotone rambling

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