Too Good to Be True

The Rise and Fall of Bernie Madoff

By: Erin Arvedlund

Narrated by: Karen White

Erin Arvedlund, the financial reporter who questioned the amazing returns of Bernie Madoff's hedge funds way back in 2001, traces the life of the infamous swindler and addresses the tough questions surrounding the collapse of his Ponzi scheme.©2009 Erin Arvedlund (P)2009 Tantor

Unbelievable True Crime

Deep background and details on the biggest Ponzi scheme in American History. Truly horrifying but couldn’t put it down.

Great book could have been more how to book

Interesting. . Sad what a terrible thing to happen to all those people. Greed is really in all of us we just don't know how much.

Good book but reader is annoying

The reader sounds like a blue blood woman. It’s not modern. Otherwise, the book covers everything about the case.

Too Good To Be True

This was a comprehensive international study. I had no idea how Madoff’s network was world wide. It is hard to understand why the powers that be, who had several high level individuals who had warned the FCC. It is a tragedy for all who lost everything. I have read countless comments that those who invested with Madoff did it because of greed. These extremely wealthy investors have to do something with their vast wealth, and Madoff had an amazing reputation.

It's good, but don't start here.

If you are newly exploring the ordeal of Bernie Madoff this is not the book for you. Too Good to Be True is an examination (an autopsy) of the culture Madoff exploited on his way to the largest Ponzi scheme ever. When you read other accounts of the Madoff story one comes away with many questions. Chiefly among them is: how did such a blatant fraud become so huge? How did Bernie Madoff get so many people to invest so much money, for so long, even as questions around his practices swirled?

Too Good to Be True is Erin Arvedlund's answer to that question. It is a detailed accounting of the Madoff systems for raising money. In many cases, he just set the wheels in motion and people vacuumed up money for him. This book is largely about those people. They didn't "knew" Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme, but they did know he wasn't on the level and chose to use that knowledge to enrich themselves and place others in peril. But Madoff himself isn't really the main focus of this book.

Doesn't add much more that a lot of details.

Arvedlund's book is a mostly boring financial account of the scandal, with little inside information into the why and how of the biggest ponzi scheme ever. Why not focus more on investigating the more interesting questions of why and when the scam started? It It seems like she is just trying to cash in on the Barron's article she wrote, which itself had little new information compared to the marhedge article that appeared before hers. Markopolis' account is much more interesting, containing a narrative that follows the timing of the event and his personal account of those events.

Her's is however, thoroughly researched and presumably the most through and detailed account.

Dry and Unorganized

comes off like a book report. all the facts are there but there is no insight. the story is not told in any comprehendible fashion. The author jumps around chronologically and with the subject matter in each chapter and within the chapters. Seems like she rushed to get this book out and this would be really a first edit with probably another 6 months of work needed on the book. But hey who am I? I've never written a book. These are just my opinions.