Wealth Secrets How the Rich Got Rich

Discover how the superwealthy made it to the top (and you can too!)

From the richest Romans to the robber barons to today's bankers and tech billionaires, Sam Wilkin offers Freakonomics-esque insights into what it really takes to make a fortune. These stories of larger-than-life characters, strategies, and sacrifices reveal how the wealthiest did it, usually by a passion for finding loopholes, working around bureaucratic systems, and creating obstacles to competitors.

Wealth Secrets of the One Percent gets at the heart of our feelings about the 1% of top income earners and the roughly 0.0001% who achieve billionaire status: we love to hate them, but we'd love to be them. Wilkin's insight into the sources of wealth is thought-provoking and rigorous, and he reveals that behind almost every great fortune is a "wealth secret" -- a moneymaking technique designed to defeat the forces of market competition.

Sam Wilkin is a senior advisor to Oxford Economics, one of the world's foremost global forecasting and research consultancies, where he previously served as head of business research. He is also a senior advisor to Oxford Analytica, a strategic analysis and advisory firm that counts among its clients many global companies and more than twenty-five world governments.

Wilkin received his B.A. in economics from Eckerd College, where he was the 2004 alumni fellow, and his M.A. in international relations from the University of Chicago. He lives in New York.