A Disposition to Be Rich: How a Small-Town Pastor's Son Ruined an American President, Brought on a Wall Street Crash, and Made Himself the Best-Hated Man in the United States
by Geoffrey C. Ward
Why You'll Love This
The man who destroyed Ulysses S. Grant's fortune and reputation was his own business partner — and this book is written by the con man's great-grandson.
- Great if you want: Gilded Age villainy with a deeply personal family reckoning underneath
- The experience: steadily gripping, with a slow dread building toward inevitable collapse
- The writing: Ward's family access gives the narrative an intimacy no outside historian could manufacture
- Skip if: you want a fast-paced thriller — this is meticulous historical biography
About This Book
Ferdinand Ward arrived in New York at twenty-one with nothing but charm, ambition, and a conscience he never bothered to consult. Within a decade, he had made himself the business partner of a former president, dazzled Wall Street, and built a fortune that existed almost entirely on paper. When it collapsed, it took Ulysses S. Grant's reputation and savings with it, wiped out thousands of investors, and triggered a financial panic that reverberated across the country. What makes Ward's story so unsettling is how ordinary his methods were — flattery, false confidence, the patience to let greed do his work for him.
Geoffrey C. Ward writes this as both historian and great-grandson, which gives the book an unusual texture: meticulous archival research shot through with a personal reckoning. The result reads less like a biography and more like a slow unmasking, each chapter tightening the portrait of a man who understood exactly what people wanted to believe and gave it to them. The Gilded Age backdrop is rendered in sharp, specific detail, and Ward never lets the era's spectacle overshadow the human damage at its center.