Someone Else's Money [Import] [Hardcover]

Michael Thomas (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 501 pages
• Publisher: Hutchinson; 1st Edition / 1st Printing edition (1982)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0091476208
• ISBN-13: 978-0091476205
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,031,834 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

After a career as a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a partner at Lehman Brothers and an independent financial consultant and investor, I sat down in 1978 to write my first novel. The book, Green Monday, published in 1980, was a success, and I became a full-time writer. Since then I have published seven other novels, written innumerable articles and reviews, and beginning in 1987, a weekly column for The New York Observer. I also contribute occasional commentary to Forbes.com.
I like to write novels that I would enjoy reading - for I was a voracious reader long before I took up the typewriter and then the computer keyboard.To me, reading enjoyment derives from both the intelligence and the heart. I've often said I read nonfiction for information, but novels for truth, by which I mean insight and understanding. Plots must make narrative sense; the reader must say to himself or herself from the first page, "Yes, this could happen!" And, indeed, much of what I've set down in my novels has in fact subsequently come to pass.My characters take a view of life, which they both shape and are shaped by. They have opinions, and sometimes what they have to say has such a ring of authenticity that readers can get upset. Still, the criticism I am most proud of appeared just last Suday, July 19, in The New York Post, in a review of my latest novel, Love & Money (Melville House), by Kyle Smith, who opened his review with the statement, "Smart people need beach reads too." There's my ideal reader: who wants both enlightenment and entertainment in the same package, and is scared of neither.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Art, sex, power and money - what more can you ask for ?, October 1, 2000

By 

J.NICHOLSON (LIVERPOOL United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Someone Else's Money (Mass Market Paperback)

This is my "all time favorite" book. As the cover review says, you will enjoy this novel - unless money, art, power and sex bore you. I have read it a dozen or more times. I can open it at any page and find myself unable to put it down. I won't take it out of my house in case I loose it, although, thanks to Amazons' out of print service, I now have a second copy.

Michael Thomas, with his background in art and banking has written a most wonderful novel linking these two subjects. The banking and Wall Street angle is ruthless and cynical, whilst some of the passages describing the (imaginary) Watteau paintings, move me almost to tears whenever I read them. So compelling was his, or rather his character Nick Revery's, praise of Watteau that I journeyed to Berlin, principally, to see "Pilgrimage to the island of Cythera" in the Charlottenburg.

I can't understand why books as wonderful as this can be out of print. Although written in 1982, it would be accurate and prophetic if written today, such was Michael Thomas' foresight.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great satricial novel, June 24, 2006

By 

David Bezanson "dbezan" (Austin, Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Someone Else's Money (Mass Market Paperback)

This novel works as a financial thriller and as satirical literary fiction -- almost a latter-day version of Mark Twain's THE GILDED AGE or Dickens' LITTLE DORRIT. The plot: A conservative Texas billionaire uses his fortune to redress the moral wrongs of American society. The method he chooses is to create an imaginary company and convince a gaggle of New York investors and institutions to put their money in it, ruining them and sending shock waves through the economy. This may have seemed like a far-fetched premise in 1982... but post-Enron, the only surprising thing is Michael Thomas isn't still gloating about his clairvoyance. Part of the reason might be that SOMEONE ELSE'S MONEY is out of print, which is a tragedy. As a thriller, it's dated, but as satire it's timeless. And the book's targets - supply-side Republicans, corporate greed, New York socialites, self-help scams - have not gone away either. A pop-fiction BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES, Michael Thomas' novel is ambitious and malicious, wistful and spiteful, with memorable characters. Thomas was both a former Wall Streeter and Metropolitan Museum art curator, and he is equally at home with financial fast-talk and the world of art. This novel is a tour-de-force and a rare example of a good writer laying aside his weaknesses. Thomas' next few novels were retreads, and he is now sidelined, with a sinecure as a New York Observer columnist. It would be nice to see him try one more time to spin a novel like this - or to see another writer take on business, art, politics, and love with the same success.