Book Description
It is one of America's treasures -- the most valuable ounce of gold in the world, the celebrated, the fabled, the infamous 1933 double eagle. It shouldn't even exist but it does, and its astonishing, true adventures read like "a composite of The Lord of the Rings and The Maltese Falcon" (The New York Times). Illegal to own and coveted all the more, it has been sought with passion by men of wealth and with steely persistence by the United States government for more than a half century.
In 1905, at the height of the exuberant Gilded Age, President Theodore Roosevelt commissioned America's greatest sculptor, Augustus Saint- Gaudens -- as he battled in vain for his life -- to create what became America's most beautiful coin.ÿIn 1933 the hopes of America dimmed in the darkness of the Great Depression, and gold -- the nation's lifeblood -- hemorrhaged from the financial system. As the economy teetered on the brink of total collapse, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his first act as president, assumed wartime powers while the nation was at peace and in a "swift, staccato action" unprecedented in United States history recalled all gold and banned its private ownership.
But the United States Mint continued, quite legally, to strike nearly a half million 1933 double eagles that were never issued and were deemed illegal to own. In 1937, along with countless millions of other gold coins, they were melted down into faceless gold bars and sent to Fort Knox. The government thought they had destroyed them all -- but they were wrong.
A few escaped, purloined in a crime -- an inside job -- that wasn't discovered until 1944. Then, the fugitive 1933 double eagles became the focus of a relentless Secret Service investigation spearheaded by the man who had put away Al Capone. All the coins that could be found were seized and destroyed. But one was beyond their reach, in a king's collection in Egypt, where it survived a world war, a revolution, and a coup, only to be lost again.
In 1996, more than forty years later, in a dramatic sting operation set up by a Secret Service informant at the Waldorf-Astoria, an English and an American coin dealer were arrested with a 1933 double eagle which, after years of litigation, was sold in July 2002 to an anonymous buyer for more than $7.5 million in a record-shattering auction. But was it the only one? The lost one?
Illegal Tender, revealing information available for the first time, tells a riveting tale of American history, liberally spiced with greed, intrigue, deception, and controversy as it follows the once secret odyssey of this fabulous golden object through the decades. With its cast of kings, presidents, government agents, shadowy dealers, and crooks, Illegal Tender will keep readers guessing about this incomparable disk of gold -- the coin that shouldn't be and almost wasn't -- until the very end.
Customer Reviews:
A Prosaic Tome That is a Very Interesting Read.......2006-09-03
As with any thriller, the book opens with the background and history of the our protagonist, in this case, the Saint-Gaudens $20 Double Eagle. Tripp repeats the well known history of how President Theodore Roosevelt wanted to extend the gilded age and update the design of US coinage. Roosevelt thought the design of the Mint's Chief Engraver Charles E. Barber's were bland and not fitting of a great nation. Tripp reproduces reports of conversations and letters from Roosevelt to Barber and other US Mint officials demanding they follow the instructions of sculptor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, as to how the coin would be minted. If you have not heard the details of this history, the first chapter is a must read.
From the history of the rise of the Saint-Gaudens $20 Double Eagle, Tripp then talks about its demise. With the country in the throes of the Great Depression and the country revolting against President Herbert Hoover at the polls, Tripp discusses the tension between Hoover and the transition team of Franklin D. Roosevelt. While the country was experience a near total economic collapse, Tripp writes how FDR did not want to do anything that would give Hoover credit for doing anything before the March, 1933 inauguration.
Hours after FDR's inauguration, the Senate approved the appointment of William H. Woodin as the Secretary of the Treasury. Woodin worked tirelessly with the Hoover administration to try to stop the damage. Tripp paints a great word picture as to how Woodin and FDR created a policy that helped the country pull out of the depression.
One of the problem was the amount of gold leaving the United States and being used for overseas trade. More gold was leaving the Treasury than they were taking in. At Woodin's urging, FDR signed an executive order recalling all privately held gold. As this executive order goes through many updates, Tripp brings us inside the Philadelphia Mint facilities as they continue to mint 1933 $20 Double Eagles. Tripp puts us right in the Mint and traces the path of these gold beauties.
With the order to melt these coins in 1934, the mystery begins. Tripp weaves the story in true mystery novel style following the trail of several of these coins as they leave the Mint. This includes the one coin with a legal export receipt that was shipped to King Farouk of Egypt. Tripp' coverage of the "Palace Collections of Egypt" or King Farouk's by the Egyptian government (website in English) is a classic twist of capitalism and greed meeting politics.
The book bogs down a bit starting in the late 1950s as the trail for all of the Double Eagles gets cold and the various law suits are settled. The story picks up again with the discovery of the Farouk coin. Tripp follows the trail from its consignment in England through the seizure in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City by the United States Secret Service. From there, the book reads like an episode of Law and Order leading up to the settlement and auction of this one-of-a-kind coin.
The only thing that makes this only a four-star book is that Tripp's prosaic tome makes this composition a somewhat arduous read. One may require a dictionary close at hand to fully understand the lexicon he uses. If nothing else, the book did help improve my vocabulary. Otherwise, Illegal Tender is a wonderful book to read and better than most mystery novels because it is true!
Illegal Tender won the 2005 Book of the Year award from the Numismatic Literary Guild.
Interesting book with many twists..........2006-01-08
This book is about a 7.5 million dollar gold coin. Obviously, this cannot be a normal coin. The book explain how the 1933 gold double eagle came to be. It begins with Saint Guadens designing the design because Teddy Rosevelt wanted new and inspiring designs. From there heads into the depression and the recall of all gold. The book invesitigates the murky beginning of all the 1933 double eagles. From there, it gets interesting. The secret service has a major headache on their hands. The plot thickens as more people come into play with these rare coins. However, you will have to read the book to see how everything plays out!
I would reccomend this book to any numismatic interested in the history of these coins. However, some parts of the book can be slow. Do not stop reading it; keep going because the action picks up. Just remember, 10 more 1933 double eagles were just (2005) recently found which would add a new chapter to the book. That development makes the story even more interesting.
Competent but Tedious.......2005-05-09
Although hard core coin collectors will enjoy this book, those of us who enjoy reading non-fiction crime stories will be a little disappointed. The author does a good job in describing the history of the coin at stake but loses something in the translation. The sad fact is that this coin's history is checkered and unknown. Therefore, the reader is always left guessing and speculating about how it ended up at auction. There is very little that is "known" when it comes to how this coin escaped the melt-down. Perhaps this is not the author's fault as he is limited by his subject. The book is readable and grabs the reader at times with the description of the auction as well as the FBI investigation in the 1930's as they tried to track down where the coins came from and who had them. All in all, the author did a competent job but the subject, which could have been fascinating, is somewhat dull.
Should have been a magazine article, not a book.......2005-04-18
The author is a journalist. It is clear that he accustomed to writing shorter essays and getting paid by the word. He spared no words or overstatements. This book is about a federal investigation of a coin wanted by collectors. I am a federal investigator and a coin collector. The first eighty pages of the book are a good read and a nice discussion of U.S. coins and the double eagle. The book then drones on and on discussing an unlikely series of circular interviews described with pointless details. The author attempts to tell the story in a colorful fashion by including passages that are reminiscent of detective novels but falling far short - to the point of being trite. Face it, this investigation lagged for 60 years. Obviously, evidence discovery was slow.
If you are getting on an airplane and want a pleasant read that will put you to sleep, go ahead and buy it. The price is cheap.
Reads like a novel but this one is a true story!!!.......2004-12-22
If you are a fan of novels like "Topaz" and "The Maltese Falcon" then you are bound to enjoy David Tripp's "Illegal Tender". But this is not fiction. Rather it is a true story spanning more than 70 years and starring of all things a $20 gold coin!!!
You see when Franklin Roosevelt took the country off the gold standard immediately after his inauguration in 1933, he ordered that all gold coins in circulation be returned to the government. It was a monumental task of course but most patriotic Americans voluntarily complied. Likewise, any gold coins that had been minted and not yet circulated were also ordered to be destroyed. In early 1933, more than 445,000 double eagle coins had been struck by the U.S. Mint. Somehow, a tiny quantity of these coins managed to see the light of day. And this is what "Illegal Tender" is all about.
You'll learn how these coins managed to escape the clutches of the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia and all about the individual who was responsible. It is equally fascinating to read about those collectors who were able to obtain a rare 1933 "double eagle". For most of these folks the "double eagle" turned out to be an albatross. Be careful what you wish for!!! And as it became known that a quantity of these "illegal" coins had somehow fallen into the hands of collectors, David Tripp chronicles the Herculean efforts of the Secret Service to retreive them. Pretty compelling stuff!!!! Along the way you'll also be introduced to a number of coin dealers, lawyers and other assorted charactors who also play a role in this intriguing tale. Just what was it about these coins that was causing such a commotion?
"Illegal Tender" gets off to a fast start and I found myself hooked right away. However, I thought the story lost a bit of momentum over the final few chapters. Nevertheless this is a well written book that certainly deserves your attention. Recommended.
Book Description
This book provides a wide-ranging account of the literature on co-integration and the modelling of integrated processes (those which accumulate the effects of past shocks). Data series which display integrated behaviour are common in economics, although techniques appropriate to analysing such data are of recent origin and there are few existing expositions of the literature. This book focuses on the exploration of relationships among integrated data series and the exploitation of these relationships in dynamic econometric modelling. The concepts of co-integration and error-correction models are fundamental components of the modelling strategy. This area of time-series econometrics has grown in importance over the past decade and is of interest to econometric theorists and applied econometricians alike. By explaining the important concepts informally, but also presenting them formally, the book bridges the gap between purely descriptive and purely theoretical accounts of the literature. The asymptotic theory of integrated processes is described and the tools provided by this theory are used to develop the distributions of estimators and test statistics. Practical modelling advice, and the use of techniques for systems estimation, are also emphasized. A knowledge of econometrics, statistics, and matrix algebra at the level of a final-year undergraduate or first-year undergraduate course in econometrics is sufficient for most of the book. Other mathematical tools are described as they occur.
Average customer rating:
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Creating and Transforming Households: The Constraints of the World-Economy (Studies in Modern Capitalism)
Joan Smith , and
Immanuel Wallerstein
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0521427134 |
Book Description
This book examines the intimate link between the micro-structures of households and the structures of the world-economy at a global level. It seeks to explain differences in wage levels for work of comparable productivity by examining the different structures of households as "income-pooling units." The authors argue that the boundaries and sources of income of households are molded by the changing patterns of the world-economy, but are also modes of defense against its pressures. Empirical data is drawn from eight local regions in three different zones: the United States, Mexico and southern Africa.
Average customer rating:
- quick read
- dont waste your time
- Entertainment, not for learning about business
- Up with the Reds!
- Gorillas Be Damned!!
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Mao in the Boardroom: Marketing Genius from the Mind of the Master Guerrilla
Gabriel Stricker
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Griffin
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Binding: Paperback
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The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
ASIN: 0312310854 |
Book Description
Young professionals adore books like The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook and The Best of the Onion, but only find dreary Spencer Johnson doorstops to read for work. Enter Mao In the Boardroom. Mao in the Boardroom complements Mao's sage sayings with brief and pointed case histories of today's leading free-market guerillas. Spiked with over fifty amusing and ironic 'photos' of Mao posing with many of today's business leaders at seminal events in their industries, Mao in the Boardroom contains dozens of stories of Davids vs. corporate Goliaths, including: -eBay-American Girl -Diesel Jeans-Fox -Fruitopia-Oakley -Gateway-And many more. -Target
Customer Reviews:
quick read.......2004-08-26
Decent, but do what I did--read it in the store. While light-hearted and often amusing, do not go to this text if you are looking for resourceful marketing ideas and strategies. As other reviewers have noted, the analyisis is sparse. The case studies are on point, that I will admit; however, a how and why is the backbone of any rigorous work that wants to be taken seriously. Unfortunately, this text positions itself in quite another vein.
dont waste your time.......2004-07-11
This book really is tripe, from the perspective of actually learning anything about guerrilla marketing other then a series of extremely brief case studies.
The examples were good, and brought to light a few interesting ideas, but at the end of the day the author simply presented these one after the other, alongside a series of pictures of chairman mao photoshopped in.
The issue was none of these examples were followed through in anyway, and there was zero analysis.
While the author clearly made an attempt to make this book light hearted and amusing, it really didn't work, and ultimately provided very little useful information and made light of the attrocities commited by this dictator.
I simply cannot reccomend it to anyone.
Entertainment, not for learning about business.......2003-10-25
This book is fluff. Hint: There's a review of the book from Maxim Magazine (great mag, but not for business) on the back cover. Book formula is "Here's this concept. Let's spend about two pages on it, and then about two pages on an real-world example. There isn't enough time spent on the concept, or the real-world example.
I picked this book up at the airport for something to read on a short trip, without checking out any Amazon reviews on it. Learn from my mistake - do yourself a favor, pass over this book.
Up with the Reds!.......2003-06-27
If we learned anything from battling those soul destroying commies over the years it's that they have a fantastic sense of humor and a love of primary colors. Well at least one.
Now a new book you can actually read, rather than just carry around to display your leftie credentials. Stricker squeezes the great man's wisdom through the press of business advice, yielding advice that has practical value in the running-dog corporate world.
Illustrative examples of desirable behavior and the right kind of thinking are up-to-date and applicable across many business situations.
I don't know what else this Stricker fellow has done, but I say "Bravo" for this effort.
Gorillas Be Damned!!.......2003-06-26
I was incredibly surprised to find that the this wonderful book had nothing to do with large hairy apes, but rather the successes of such other GIANTS as Skyy Vodka, Ben & Jerry, AT&T, and the Amazon books(neither "guerillas" OR "gorillas").
You can not turn a page without leafing / laughing through it and having fun AND great information fall through your brain and onto your fellow traveler. This could be the World's Earliest Xmas Present.
Book Description
Journey through the career of musical giant, milestone guitarist, and recording innovator Les Paul, and marvel at the world of cutting-edge guitar design! This book emerged out of author Robb Lawrence's years of research, interviews, extensive vintage archives (including original Les Paul/Mary Ford articles, press photos, music and recordings), and gorgeous original photography. It's all here: the factory pictures, the designers, the electronics; stories of the various Goldtops, Humbucking pickups, the Custom "Fretless Wonder" and the heralded '50s "Sunburst" Standard; Les Paul in his own words, as well as Michael Bloomfield and Jeff Beck talking about their Les Paul Sunbursts; and full-color illustrations throughout. Through these insights and recollections, you'll see how this popular man and his admirers have created the Les Paul Legacy.
Customer Reviews:
I doubt you'll see it. .......2006-02-19
I would love to see this book come out on March 15th. But let's face it, this book has has 15 release dates going back 3 years or so. Will it ever come out ? who knows.
Average customer rating:
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The O.C. 2006 Calendar
Manufacturer: Cedco Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Calendar
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Customer Reviews:
Nice Calender.......2006-02-24
Just your standard calendar, but nice. A little spendy, but worth it for the true OC fan.
The OC Calendar.......2006-02-24
It was in perfect condition, and I was very happy with it's delivery status!
2006 oc wall calendar excellent item.......2006-01-30
the calendar I purchased was great excellent condition very fast shipping I would purchase again
Amazon.com
Because it's very popular among Internet service providers (ISPs), FreeBSD is likely the Unix flavor you work with when you Telnet into the server that hosts a Web site. For that reason, it's worth having FreeBSD Unleashed around if you frequently need to log in to various hosted environments but don't do your day-to-day work on a FreeBSD computer. If you're running FreeBSD on your own machine--and more than a few Linux critics say you should be--you'll get even more out of this book, particularly if you prefer to have your reference materials on paper. It's a good idea to have them that way when you're having problems getting FreeBSD to connect to the Internet, after all.
This book explains, succinctly, how to do basic utilitarian stuff like moving files and creating users, and advanced utilitarian stuff like "building the world" from raw source. Further, the authors explain Unix concepts (like the shell and its relationship to the kernel) clearly and in ample detail. Michael Urban and Brian Tiemann also go beyond FreeBSD itself, explaining such concepts as wide area networks (WANs) and basic, environment-neutral Perl programming. Whether these inclusions are valuable extras or extraneous padding depends upon your perspective, but there's no doubt that the authors maintain a high quality standard throughout their documentation of FreeBSD and its allied technologies. --David Wall
Topics covered: Using and enjoying the FreeBSD flavor of Unix, with emphasis on versions 4.4 and 5.0. Instructions and explanations--all rather detailed--appear on installing the operating system, configuring groups and users, setting up daemons (including those for network services like mail), and connecting to other computers (as well as the Internet). Installable copies of FreeBSD 4.4 and 5.0 ship with this book.
Book Description
FreeBSD is extremely robust and powers some of the largest internet sites in world including Yahoo!. FreeBSD 6 Unleashed provides complete coverage of everything you need to know to use FreeBSD to its full potential, including coverage of FreeBSD 6.0. This edition includes updated coverage of Apache, MySQL and Sendmail, as well as added coverage of PowerPC support for Macintosh G3 and G4 platforms. This is the most up to date, comprehensive reference on the market covering FreeBSD 6.0.
Customer Reviews:
I'm reading this cover-to-cover!.......2007-05-24
This is an excellent book! It explains many things I've noticed but didn't comprehend well in FreeBSD and Linux. The authors are very gifted at communicating, a rare gift concerning tech book and online doc authors (generally, such works so dull, they may merely serve (too often) as ambiguous reference material). The authors also give some interesting history about FreeBSD and its competitors; they give a very compelling case for the OS, which was first being developed in the era of the first moon landing and in the heart of the cold war.
The authors give the steps for setting up the GUI, and many options for this (this is bedeviling for many of us--a default GUI doesn't "pop-up" after install as in commercially-supported Linux, Windows, and the Mac OS--one "builds" the GUI from a low level with desired features), and, also, the authors explain the reasons for having to set up the GUI (the OS is favored by server users who prefer a lean command-line interface).
The bewildering VI editor is thoughtfully explained in some detail as well: It is a high-powered, yet, heavily keyboard-command dependent (and user-unfriendly) text editor that often is necessary for system configuration and software development. It's not user friendly (or "intuitive") because it was developed in the aforementioned cold-war era of really limited computer power and storage: Needless to say, it hasn't changed much....
The book, which I haven't yet finished but am eagerly reading daily, gives many caveats (such as configuring the sync settings of monitors correctly). FreeBSD is not a good OS for a PC newbie to learn to use (at least not without a knowledgeable mentor); nevertheless, I think this is a very good intro book for gamers and high-level techies--these may wish to use FreeBSD in advanced ways such as for servers, developing firewalls, as well as for common internet/e-mail and other networking tasks (such tasks are inherently more secure and speedy on FreeBSD)--or for those well-exposed to Linux, or Apple OSX--cousin-OSes or, in the latter case, a direct descendant....
A Good Book.......2007-01-09
The book was comprehensive and showed me enough to use FreeBSD effectively.
Fantastic!!!.......2006-09-24
This book is wonderful for the beginner who already knows about the ins and outs of computers. I installed freeBSD and was so impressed that I bought this book. It has already been an asset and I have learned a ton about this operating system and I am only in Chapter 4!
Worth the money, it is in-depth and doesn't miss a step so far!
Best Wishes On Your FreeBSD Adventure!!! Microsoft won't know what hit 'em!
This book is a good referance for newbies and hardened geeks alike!
If you're new to FreeBSD, you will like it........2006-09-08
This book isn't for me.
You would think a FreeBSD book in 2006 will tell you things like how to keep your system safe with binary updates, or walk you through a decent CUPS installation, or mention using OpenBSD's firewall tool. It's just the same-old same-old. There's little here that can't be learned from the Handbook or Greg Lehey's The Complete FreeBSD. And both are free. To be fair, there is new stuff here, like installing the official Sun JDK port for FreeBSD, or using portupgrade, but I expected a little more thoroughness and variation in choices in the areas of security, ports and printing. Also, I think a chapter about contributing to the FreeBSD ports tree would have been good to have.
However, if you're new to Unix/FreeBSD, than I think you will enjoy the chatty style instead of the rather more terse style of The Handbook.
I think that is a good book.......2006-07-18
I preorder this book, and waited by 2 months until it was published, but FreeBSD 6 really was a good choice. It is well wrote, but for my is necessary a better chapter reference, because I used it like a reference book and some time I need to look in the entire book to find a specific topic.
Books:
- Inside Solidworks
- Insurance Annual Report, 1997
- INSURANCE AUTO AUCTIONS, INC.: Labor Productivity Benchmarks and International Gap Analysis (Labor Productivity Series)
- Insurance Regulation: Shortcomings In Statutory Asset Reserving Methods For Life Insurers
- Irmi's Commercial Auto Insurance Guide
- Kirschner's Insurance Directories: Central States 2000 (Kirschner's Insurance Directory : Central States 2000)
- Kirschner's Insurance Directories: Indiana 2002 (Kirschner's Insurance Directory. Indiana, 2002)
- Kirschner's Insurance Directory: Central States 2001 (Kirschner's Insurance Directory : Central States, 2001)
- Kirschner's Insurance Directory: Michigan 2002 (Kirschner's Insurance Directory. Michigan, 2002)
- Life Is a Series of Presentations: 8 Ways to Punch Up Your People Skills at Work, at Home, Anytime, Anywhere
Books Index
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Double Eagle: The Epic Story of the World's Most Valuable Coin
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