Reviewed by Andrew Clancy, Senior Editor
Soundview Executive Book Summaries

The meteoric nature of global commerce combined with the rising effects of inflation has somewhat devalued the term billionaire. There was a time when to be a billionaire was to sit in a stratum of society reserved for a group that could be counted on one hand. In the mid 1960s, there were five living American billionaires. While names such as Howard Hughes and John Paul Getty are 20th century counterparts to names like Rockefeller and Carnegie, one overlooked member of the exclusive list of five was insurance and real estate magnate John D. MacArthur. After finishing Nancy Kriplen's The Eccentric Billionaire it is difficult to understand why such a combative, adversarial figure such as MacArthur is not remembered in the same breath with the aforementioned power brokers.

Born in 1897 in Pennsylvania, MacArthur was the last of seven children. He was the product of a preacher father, who dabbled in farming to stay afloat, and a mother whose faith was repeatedly tested by the arrival of yet another child. It is important for readers to devote an extra degree of concentration to the branches on MacArthur's family tree. Kriplen spends a good deal of time going through the inner workings of the family, although it is difficult to draw a direct correlation between this upbringing and the resulting success that MacArthur experienced in the insurance industry. The narrative seems to swing on a pendulum between MacArthur battling with his siblings and working in tandem with them to finance one aspect or another of his empire. One slight criticism of The Eccentric Billionaire is the amount of pages devoted to MacArthur's father and one or two of his brothers. One gets the feeling that Kriplen found these characters worthy of their own book but they had neither the depth of experiences or the visibility necessary to capture the audience's attention.

MacArthur was quoted later in life as saying that success in business required hard work, luck and opportunism "in that order." MacArthur certainly put himself through his paces with the first of the three. Like so many success stories, The Eccentric Billionaire repeatedly leaves readers with the feeling that reaching the highest level of success requires a single-mindedness and indefatigable drive not possessed by mere mortals. The book's strongest sections are those that detail MacArthur's growth in the insurance industry. While more than a few of his actions skirted the boundaries of legality, readers will gain great insight into the process of developing a business in a burgeoning industry. At the time he started Bankers Life and Casualty, the insurance industry consisted of a few giants and hundreds of struggling minnows. The fact that MacArthur was attempting to grow his business at the onset of the Great Depression makes his astronomical success all the more amazing. Marketing professionals will get a kick out of the direct mail campaign run by MacArthur that helped propel his company to new heights.

It is very difficult to be an immense success in business without occasionally toeing the ethical line, and MacArthur was no exception. While The Eccentric Billionaire would never be classified as a "tell-all," Kriplen sometimes paints an unflattering picture of her subject. MacArthur's extreme parsimony is discussed, right down to his pocketing of a seat-mate's leftover pie on a first-class flight. Some of the sins divulged in the book are an obvious remnant of a by-gone "boy's club" office environment. However, accusations of gross misconduct or Enron-like abuses of the system are nowhere to be found. MacArthur was really only guilty of taking whatever advantage was available to him and leveraging it to further his own success. Capitalism, although often the recipient of some bad press, is not against the law.

In a bit of a twist, the claim to fame for which MacArthur is most likely remembered is the very thing he would have preferred to keep under wraps. After his death, a foundation was set up that gives annual grants to "geniuses" in an immensely diverse number of fields. For his part, MacArthur dreaded ever receiving the title "philanthropist" because of the belief that a queue of people would form outside his door with their hands out for a donation. Even in an act of charity, MacArthur wanted assurance that things would be done his way. It is this trademark that ensured he would rise from poor preacher's son to the second richest man in America at the time of his death. The Eccentric Billionaire is an interesting chronicle of a life that would be difficult to duplicate.

The Eccentric Billionaire by Nancy Kriplen is published by Amacom. It is under consideration by Soundview Executive Book Summaries. If you'd like to subscribe to Soundview Executive Book Summaries, please click here.