The Secrets of Overnight Success

By Max Gunther

In this book you will meet three dozen impatient people. They weren’t satisfied with the slow, plodding, money-saving route to financial security, the safe route that most of us feel stuck with. They wanted instant wealth – and they got it.

As Max Gunther points out, our folklore frowns on the idea of quick money. As in the fable about the race between a tortoise and a hare. “In the fable, the hare loses. The stories in this book are not fables. They are true. In these stories, the hares win.”

They are a richly varied lot, these happy hares. Gunther opens with a few dazzling millionaire legends, such as the man who invented Monopoly. You’ll then meet fascinating characters such as: Harvey Shuster, who beat the stock market; Howard Brown, who decided to be rich and became a multi-millionaire within three years; and a group of men who made fast fortunes on fads such as the Hula Hoop and the Frisbee.

These stores illustrate that the dream of quick money isn’t such a ridiculous dream after all. Read these tales about hares who have won and when you have, maybe you’ll decide to run with them.

On that original tulip exchange in Amsterdam, one of Max Gunther's ancestors bought a hundred dollars' worth of bulbs in 1632 and paid a witch to insure the investment's success. By 1636 (so the story goes), Gunther's ancestor's bulbs were worth $150,000. So much for pedigree.

Max Gunther was born in England and emigrated to the US when he was 11. He attended schools in New Jersey and received his B.A. from Princeton University in 1949. He served in the U.S. Army in 1950-51 and was a staff member of Business Week from 1951 to 1955. He then served as a contributing editor of Time for two years. His articles were published in several magazines and he wrote several books, including The Luck Factor, How to Get Lucky, The Zurich Axioms, Wall Street and Witchcraft, The Very, Very Rich and How They Got That Way, and Instant Millionaires.