Overview

"This substantially updated edition of the Business Week bestseller and an Economist ""Best Book of the year"" tells the story of the secretive billionaire-turned-philanthropist, who is determined to give away his fortune before he dies. Chuck Feeney was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, to a blue-collar Irish-American family during the Depression. After service in the Korean War, he made a fortune as founder of Duty Free Shoppers, the world's largest duty-free retail chain. By 1988, he was hailed by Forbes Magazine as the twenty-fourth richest American alive. But secretly Feeney had already transferred all his wealth to his foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies. Only in 1997 when he sold his duty free interests, was he ""outed"" as one of the greatest and most mysterious American philanthropists in modern times. After going ""underground"" again, he emerged in 2005 to cooperate on a biography promoting giving while living. Now in his mid-seventies, Feeney is determined his foundation should spend down the remaining $4 billion in his lifetime."

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9798200648542

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Reviews

"""A smart business book detailing some vicissitudes of retailing, wrapped in a vivid biography of an engaging tycoon."" -- ""Kirkus Reviews"" ""Chuck Feeney is what Donald Trump would be if he led his entire existence backwards."" -- ""New York Post"" ""Conor O'Clery's fine and insightful portrait rightly ensures that this distinguished Irish-American is no longer unsung."" -- ""Bertie Ahern, Irish Prime Minister"" ""Feeney's beneficence already ranks among the grandest of any living American and may someday make him the most generous American philanthropist of all time."" -- ""Time "" ""You may never read a book as uplifting as Conor O'Clery's The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune."" -- ""Washington Post's Express"""

Author Information

Conor O'Clery lived and worked in Russia during the final years of the Soviet Union as Moscow correspondent for theIrish Times. He won journalist of the year in Ireland for his reporting from the Soviet Union and again in 2002 for his first-hand accounts of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. He is GlobalPost's Ireland correspondent and is the author of several books, including The Billionaire Who Wasn't, Moscow, December 25, 1991: The Last Day of the Soviet Union, and Ireland in Quotes: A History of the 20th Century. Erik Synnestvedt has recorded nearly two hundred audiobooks for trade publishers as well as for the Library of Congress Talking Books for the Blind program. They include The Day We Found the Universe by Marcia Bartusiak, A Game as Old as Empire edited by Steven Hiatt, and Twitter Power by Joel Comm.

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