Millionaire

Mark Frankel

Thoroughly researched, Millionaire is a marvelous read that animates its flawed hero while intelligently illuminating his time.
— BusinessWeek

Forbes Magazine

Extraordinary, true story of a fugitive Scotsman John Law, wanted in England for killing a man in a duel in 1694. Law ends up in France, where he quickly, briefly becomes the most powerful man in Europe’s most powerful country, thanks to an elaborate inflationary scheme. Like most states, France was perpetually short of cash. Instead of having gold and silver be the coins of realm, Law reasoned, why not print money? Law naively thought political authorities would soberly control the printing presses. (England knew better; it was moving to a gold standard.) Law was soon disabused of that notion, but instead of walking away, he devised grander, ever more desperate stopgaps to keep the game going. Britain, too was going through a bubble, but its developing financial institutions, primarily the Bank of England, enabled London to better weather the resultant storm. Subsequently, the Brits, with a sound currency and the rule of law, were able to raise vast sums of money at reasonable rates to finance a war effort that bested the French in North America, despite France’s having four times Britain’s population. (19 Feb 2001)
—Steve Forbes

Library Journal

In a marvelous follow-up to The Arcanum, Gleeson tells the story of "Jessamy John" Law, a brilliant mathematician, author, banker, womanizer, and killer who was condemned to die, escaped from prison, and rose to superstardom as France's financial controller. The problem he faced, much as we do today, was how to maintain public confidence in a credit-based financial system that relied implicitly on intrinsically valueless money. His bank, the Banque Royale, was the first national bank in France to rely on the issue of paper money to build its advantage. His organization, the Compagnie d'Occident, or Mississippi Company, sparked the first major international stock-market boom and bust by promising a field of drams based on the unexplored riches of the Mississippi River Valley. The author's short epilog provides relevance by noting the lasting effects of John Law's system and the still-present tools of instability that underlie today's financial markets. Gleeson tells the story of this flawed, brilliant man in the context of his time. Recommended for public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 3/15/00.]-Norman B. Hutcherson, Kern Cty. Lib., Bakersfield, CA

Diana B. Henriques

Her obvious passion for her story carries the reader along from crisis to crisis, and her eye for sensual detail allows her to recreate vividly the opulent world of French regency society.
—The New York Times Book Review

The New Yorker

Gleeson is a gifted biographer whose book reminds us that finance is a passionate as well as a rational endeavor.

Kirkus Reviews

An engaging, enlightening biography of the Scottish financial genius Law (1671-1729), whose innovations created for 18th-century France a remarkable but evanescent economic boom. Gleeson (The Arcanum, 1999) is a storyteller with uncommon gifts: here he unsnarls the complicated tale of a complex man who revolutionized the way people think about money. The son of a prominent goldsmith in Edinburgh, Law showed early promise in fencing and tennis—but most notable were his formidable mathematical talents, which enabled him to profit substantially from a variety of games of chance. In 1694, however, he killed the son of a powerful London family in a duel and soon found himself convicted of murder and sentenced to hang. Friends arranged for his escape, and he crossed the Channel to the Continent, where he began life anew. In Genoa, he eloped with another man's wife. In the Hague, he befriended a nephew of Louis XIV—a connection that would eventually result in his rise to the top of the French financial bureaucracy and make him "the richest subject in Europe." With lucent wit, Gleeson chronicles Law's rise and fall. Most intriguing are her accounts of his creation of the Mississippi Company, a stock venture that generated one of history's greatest boom-and-bust stories. Law, who had already convinced the French government to begin issuing paper money (to compensate for the critical shortage of coins and precious metal), sold shares in France's holdings in America. Soon people from all walks of life made enormous fortunes as the price of the stock skyrocketed (occasioning a new word—"millionaire"). But all collapsed when word spread that nolargedeposits of gold or silver had been found in the New World. During one of the ensuing "runs" on the banks, a dozen people died, trampled underfoot by the stampede of fearful depositors eager to reclaim their investments. Law, his life at risk, fled the country in disgrace and died broke in Venice. A brilliant cautionary tale whose relevance to the volatile economies of today is remarkable—and alarming.