Fun While It Lasted: My Rise and Fall In the Land of Fame and Fortune [Hardcover]

Bruce Mcnall (Author), Michael D'Antonio (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 9, 2003

ruce McNall became obsessed with coin collecting at the age of 10. At 16, his collection was worth $60,000. During college, he traveled the world buying coins stolen from ancient sites and tombs. McNall's first major sale was to Sy Weintraub, the head of Panavision, who bought $500,000 worth of coins in one sitting. Soon, McNall branched out into horse racing, movie making (The Fabulous Baker Boys), and owning the L.A. Kings hockey team.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Creativity is highly prized in the business world but once that creativity extends to bookkeeping, things can get a bit sticky. Bruce McNall's creative career afforded him celebrity status, millions of dollars, an opulent lifestyle, and, in the end, a five-year prison term. His memoir, Fun While It Lasted, which shares the same breeziness hinted at in its title, is both entertaining and a bit depressing. McNall parlayed a boyhood interest in rare coins into a profitable livelihood even before entering college. Within a few years, he was traveling the world, buying up coins from shady dealers and reselling them to Hollywood's elite. McNall played fast and loose with his prices and accounting and profited handsomely off a market that he helped create. From coins, he branched out, trading in thoroughbred racehorses, and buying the L.A. Kings hockey team. Ultimately, the FBI caught up with him and McNall was jailed for fraud. In reflecting on his life and crimes, McNall heartily endorses the assessment made by a Los Angeles Daily News reporter: "In the end, Bruce McNall wanted too much to be liked." And while that explanation is awfully sweet, if one judges by his choices and lifestyle it seems like his problem was plain old greed. Despite his financial success and stunning talent as a salesman, McNall always seemed to crave more money and power and was willing to break laws and lie to achieve them. Because it details a life more dramatic than most, and because its compelling central character ultimately gets his comeuppance, Fun While It Lasted, co-written by Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael D'Antonio, manages to be both a fun adventure and a cautionary moral tale. --John Moe

From Publishers Weekly

When McNall was a kid, his dad wasn't emotionally available, and, as a result, McNall grew up with a need to be liked. An oversized need, actually, which is why, he says, he defrauded several financial institutions out of $236 million. As a teenager, McNall was fascinated by ancient coins and soon became one of the world's leading collectors and dealers. Later, he got into horse racing, creating ownership syndicates that included the rich and famous. He bought a movie production company, a Canadian football team and the L.A. Kings hockey team. He brought Wayne Gretzky to the U.S. and, in 1992, was appointed chairman of the National Hockey League. Alas, ethics weren't a part of McNall's voyage to millionairedom. He abused his position to buy ancient coins well below the wholesale price, smuggled coins out of Tunis, paid under-the-table commissions and, before long, graduated to fraud. Taking payment for coins he had not purchased and using assets that didn't exist to secure loans, McNall was essentially operating a loan pyramid. By the time the FBI came to call, his company had nine different sets of books. McNall got 70 months for his crimes and offers a detailed but unconvincing account of the rigors of minimum-security federal prison camps. In fact, McNall is unconvincing as anything other than a white-collar conman, and his story, while sufficiently dramatic, doesn't provide enough backbone to give him credibility, never mind sympathy.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion; 1 edition (July 9, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786868643
• ISBN-13: 978-0786868643
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,192,781 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good, fun read..., July 24, 2003

By 

Douglas A Thome (dallas, tx United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fun While It Lasted: My Rise and Fall In the Land of Fame and Fortune (Hardcover)

I didn't know who Bruce McNall was before I purchased the book. I was familiar with the LA Kings run a few years ago and thought it would be interesting to read about the man behind it. I enjoyed the book. It is an easy, quick read. Bruce covers a lot of time in the book so the material is broad, but not very deep. His stories are interesting and often humorous. Some subjects were glossed over and I would have liked a little more detail. No doubt this book is a prelude for a movie about Bruce. The book covers so many areas(ancient coins, sports, horseracing, hollywood, etc.) of Bruce's life that there is something for just about everyone. Good read and I highly recommend it.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The most interesting parts pre-date his arrest, July 14, 2004

By 

Brandon Hammell (Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fun While It Lasted: My Rise and Fall In the Land of Fame and Fortune (Hardcover)

Bruce McNall is a man who gained and lost a substantial fortune. How could a book detailing his experience not be entertaining?

His memoir is at its most interesting as he is ascending from humble beginings to a place of wealth and affluence. It's a familiar story, but McNall's tale has a freshness to it. Somehow a coin dealer's evolution into a sports mogule is novel.

Oddly, the book loses momentum when the author is shuffled off to jail. I doubt anyone picked up Bruce McNall's biography to catch a glimpse inside prison life, but his descripion of it is painstaking.

Still, the man is a likable figure, and his story is an enjoyable one.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Doing crime, doing lunch, March 1, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Fun While It Lasted: My Rise and Fall In the Land of Fame and Fortune (Hardcover)

It's hard to say which was worse. The man's fixation with his B list celebrity friends even as his life was crumbling around him. (Alan Thicke visited him in jail!) Or his rationalizing a 10 year pattern of fraud even as he claims he is taking responsibility for it. (his first coin collecting partner deserved to be swindled because he drove too hard a bargain; the Hunt brothers weren't really harmed by the fraud he worked on them; the banks practically forced him to defraud them).

The book seems to be written not to understand or explain why he committed frauds in excess of $200 million but to have us know that Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn are very,very dear friends. He mentions hockey players on dozens of pages while his children barely rate a mention until they are dragged in for bathetic effect when he is carted off to jail.

Like Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, McNall in prison obviously plumbed the depths of his soul in order to understand himself. Why did he commit these massive frauds? Because he wanted too much to be liked. That's what he really said.

His tepid story telling is no compensation for the fact that McNall clearly still believes that doing lunch matters more than doing crime.