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Published Jun 2010
352 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
"Success from the financial and from the prestige point of view ... is not enough; what matters even more is ... adherence to high moral and aesthetic standards." -Siegmund Warburg, 1959
In this pathbreaking new biography, based on more than ten thousand hitherto unavailable letters and diary entries, bestselling author Niall Ferguson returns to his roots as a financial historian to tell the story of Siegmund Warburg, an extraordinary man whose austere philosophy of finance offers much insight today.
A refugee from Hitler's Germany, Warburg rose to become the dominant figure in postwar City of London and one of the architects of European financial integration. Seared by the near collapse and then "Aryanization" of his family's long-established bank in the 1930s and then frustrated by the stagnation of its Wall Street sister, Kuhn Loeb, in the 1950s, Warburg resolved that his own firm of S. G. Warburg (founded in 1946) would be different.
An obsessive perfectionist with an aversion to excessive risk, Warburg came to embody the ideals of the haute banquet - high finance - always eschewing the fast buck in favor of gilt-edged advice. He was not only the master of the modern merger and founder of the eurobond; he was also a key behind-the-scenes adviser to governments in London, Tokyo, and Jerusalem - to his critics, a "financial Rasputin." Like a character from a Thomas Mann novel, Warburg was a complex and ambivalent man, as much a psychologist, politician, and actor-manager as he was a banker. In High Financier Niall Ferguson shares the first book-length examination of a man whose life and work suggest an alternative to the troubled business principles that helped shape our current financial landscape.
"Readable, accessible and not a little nostalgic." - Kirkus Reviews
"Starred Review. Ferguson has written a most engrossing and edifying tale of high finance. Readers interested in financial and general 20th-century British history will find much of value here. Highly recommended." - Library Journal
"The view from Warburg’s lofty perch doesn’t make for a discerning perspective on the world around him." - Publishers Weekly
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Niall Ferguson, MA, D.Phil., is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford.
Born in Glasgow in 1964, he graduated with First Class Honors from Magdalen College, Oxford. His books include Paper and Iron: Hamburg Business and German Politics in the Era of Inflation 1897-1927, The Pity of War: Explaining World War One, The World's Banker: The History of the House of Rothschild, High Financier: The Lives and Time of Siegmund Warburg, The Great Degeneration and Henry Kissinger: A Life.
He won the Wadsworth Prize for Business History and was also short-listed for the Jewish Quarterly/Wingate Literary Award and the American National Jewish Book ...
... Full Biography
Link to Niall Ferguson's Website
Name Pronunciation
Niall Ferguson: Can be pronounced Nigh-al or Neil depending on country of origin. The author pronounces his name Neil
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