Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Bruce Mcnall story is intriguing from page one...from working in a small coin shop in arcadia, ca ...to hobknobbing with the likes of the Texas Hunt brothers(at about the time they were trying to corner the silver market), investing horses, producing movies, and buying sport franchises...it is just unbelievable that one man could do all that he did by age 44...I loved every page of this book...would luv it to be made into a feature movie or atleast a t.v. movie.

Just as he did in making LA Kings games a wonderfully popular attraction for hockey fans, McNall is providing heaps of fun for us in this memoir of his rise and fall. When watching a magician at work, we know the purpose is entertainment, rather than truth-telling; so, too, this volume is not a true soul-bearing confessional that reveals the internal demons that led McNall to a life of huge financial crimes. His deepest confession -- that he simply wanted to be liked too much -- clearly is a superficial revelation, but we know that McCall intends here to get us to like him (not to really understand him); although a different kind of book that truly exposed the dark side of his being would have been an important contribution, McCall instead succeeds in providing us here a thoroughly enjoyable few hours attending to his breezy recounting of his many colorful, if unlawful, achievements and a summary recounting of how they inevitably led to a 5-year detour behind bars. The worlds he traversed -- trading rare coins, breeding and racing thoroughbred horses, feature-film-making, and building winning sports franchises-- provide enough entertaining vignettes for many books (and many lives!), and we can be thankful that he crammed so much writing into such a manageable and readable volume.

What an amazing life and well written story! This book does a great job of describing Bruce's quest for the next big high -- from a rare coin, a win at the race track, or turning the Kings into a ice hockey powerhouse.

Easy to read and a very interesting, I would highly recommend this book to anyone!

Following Bruce McNall's storied, and seemingly successful, career, it came as quite a surprise to hear of his legal woes and incarceration. This book chronicles all in a highly readable manner.

Seriously why would anyone indulge someone who bilked the banks "the people" of over 200 million dollars?
Who pays for these unscrulpulos activities?

And he is "famous"? Only in his own mind. What is wrong with society that these people get attention?

Don't contribute more to his ego and buy his book.

The author, Bruce McNall, was no doubt a flawed individual who got swept up in some schemes that would ultimately send him to prison; yet he had a great deal of charisma which oozes through the pages of his book.

This is a guy who certainly knew how to get people to buy into whatever it was he was "selling" at the time, and his perspective on his wild ride into the craziness of big business, professional sports, and of course, Tinsletown, make for an extraordinary read.

Although his antics were a bit devious at times, McNall provided a fascinating look into the events that shaped his destiny, and really gives anyone a lesson into how fleeting fame and fortune can be when mixed with the volatile world of money, power and influence.

That's a dangerous combination and should be handled with extreme care. McNall handled it with great abandon, but his honesty in revealing his flawed approach to certain aspects of life made for quite a compelling narrative.

After reading this book, I don't know whether to despise or feel sorry for McNall. While he apologizes a number of times in the book, the apologizes seem to be for getting caught and embarrassing his friends and family rather than for the illegal acts. In his mind, the ends always justify the means.

Is the book accurate. It's probably as truthful as McNall lived his life.