Editor’s Note: I’m not much of a biography guy but this one reads like fiction. Through 400 pages, O’Clery does a great job with short punchy chapters about a man I’d never hear of before. Chuck Feeney quietly built a multi-billion dollar empire of Duty Free stores and then even more quietly invested all of his fortune in social change. He patterned his life after Andrew Carnegie’s essay on “Wealth” which dealt with “giving while living.” No matter where your point of view ends up on the man or his works, it’s just a helluva read.
Excerpt: “The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship.” Note: This excerpt is the first sentence of Carnegie’s essay on wealth published in 1889 and still so true today.