The Club No One Wanted to Join

Madoff Victims in Their Own Words

By: Twenty-nine Authors

Narrated by: Diane Havens

Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's summary

It has been the public's perception that Madoff investors were all extremely wealthy and all belonged to exclusive clubs. This perception has been reinforced by the media and the powers that be. The truth is, with very few exceptions, such as Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Picower, and Stanley Chais, most were average, small-time investors. They did not belong to exclusive private clubs or any other fancy clubs. They lived an average American life; they worked hard, contributed to society and saved for their retirement years. But in the end that was not enough. No one, it turns out, could protect them from the worst financial criminal in history, Bernard L. Madoff. As a result, they were all thrown tragically into one club none of them ever expected to join: the "club" of victims. This is their story.

This is the first book of its kind about the Madoff Ponzi scheme, in which 29 Madoff investors band together to tell their story without an intermediary, directly to the public and in their own words. Baring private details and exposing the truth about who the real victims are, they don't hold back as to who really enabled the scheme to continue for 40 years. Listeners need to know what the authorities would rather keep from them, or else they are destined to become the next victims. The book's message is: this can happen to anyone.

The authors are men and women just like the average listener. They come from all walks of life - blue collar, white collar- from all parts of the country and at different life stages. These are working-class families, ex-multi-millionaires, professionals, artists, and retirees. They come from Florida, Minnesota, Vermont, New York, New Jersey, California, Pennsylvania, Texas, and other states. They come from different ethnic and religious backgrounds. In short they are regular people, Americans who got sucked into a Ponzi scheme that even the federal government has yet to solve. They all have one thing in common: they were robbed of their life savings by the worst financial criminal in history, Bernard L. Madoff. It is time that the public learns the truth.

This is a story of financial devastation, of lessons learned, of hope and rebirth. It has been more than a year since the fraud came to light and the survivors are now ready to share their experience and the hard-learned lessons with the public.

Though the financial disaster caused major transformations in their lives, transformations which are still ongoing, their spirit has not been broken.

As one of the authors in this book summed up eloquently, "There will always be meaningful work to be done, more fun to be had, and lots more people to love." And in the end, that is the message of hope the authors wish to convey.

©2011 Alexandra Roth, Mary Thomajan, Sarah Fisk, Timothy Murray, Maureen A. Ebel, Robert Halio, RV, Robin Jungreis Swernoff, Jeannene Langford, Elisabetta Sandolo, Allan Goldstein, AKL, Richard M. Friedman, (P)2011 Alexandra Roth Book Project LLC

A story everyone should hear

Would you consider the audio edition of The Club No One Wanted to Join to be better than the print version?

Yes.

What other book might you compare The Club No One Wanted to Join to and why?

Any book that doesn't go for the obvious but looks at a part of the story that so much of the mainstream media missed and shows the much wider impact this fraud had on everyday people.

What does Diane Havens bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

She brings the storytellers alive, as though they are sitting in the room with you. It adds a richness to the story that I don't think you can get by reading the book.

Too Close to reality

This book puts a spotlight about our society . Our economy and lives evolve around money. We work hard and try to save as much money as possible. Then we take all our money that we saved and give to a financial group to invest. Then we hope and pray that it all goes well. So we can retire and leave something for the next generation. This book spotlights what happens when things go horribly wrong.
Lastly this spotlights how our society how we wants to blame the victims. NOT blame our government for NOT doing there jobs!! That our tax dollars pay them so well to do. Over A dozen years latter we have NOT changed yet. In the fact that we allow our government to be dysfunctional, incompetent, and disagreeable.

Varied group of victims..

I've listened to quite a few of the Madoff books about the big scam, but found this one to be the most interesting. These stories come from the victims themselves, all of whom describe their financial situation, what class they fall into, and how the scandal has affected their lives long term.. One might thing Madoff mostly screwed with the rich, but he didn't. He screwed over working class people, too.. Amazing that one man was so greedy he didn't care what he was doing to people who had very little, but trusted him to help them have a better tomorrow.
The stories themselves are very interesting.. Some of the victims, are as you would suspect, bitter and angry.. Their lives have been forever changed and have become a financial struggle and sometimes, a nightmare.. but then there are the victims who feel this was a chance to grow, to learn from the experience and who harbor no ill will toward Madoff.. Those stories are the really amazing ones.. Not to take away from the victims who are still very angry.. they understandably have a reason to be so...
The book doesn't mention this, but there are quite a few stories told by couples, only told separately, in their own words.. It's interesting how the same situation can affect two married people, sometimes very differently.
When you listen to these stories, you will understand the depth of what Madoff did, and took, from so many working class citizens who just simply could not afford to be taken. Very sad for them..Shame on you Bernie Made-Off!!!!!

One side of the story

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

I live in South Africa and most of my friends are not interested in Madoff but I am fascinated with this Man. I would love to find out why he did this terrible thing. Was it the love of money, power, fame or just greed and because he could get away with it. Perhaps we will never know. Maybe I missed some of the stories in this book but mainly they all seemed to have the same story (a bit like my own story) grew up poor, worked hard all my life, invested carefully, lived simply). Very interesting but I must confess I would have liked to hear from people who were rich and wanted a above average investment when they could have chosen a more safer investment i.e. possibly Lehman Bros. (that would have been a mistake). Perhaps a rich, powerful charity - what happened to the charity. as I said I could be incorrect and possibly I missed those stories.

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

All the stories were interesting

What three words best describe Diane Havens’s performance?

listenable, pleasant, easy on the ear.

Do you think The Club No One Wanted to Join needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

possibly for the reasons given above. what happened to the victims - long term

Any additional comments?

I enjoyed the book.

Sad story poor narration

It was tough to get thru this book due to the voice of the narrator. It got s bit redundant as almost all of the stories were the same.