From the bestselling author of House of Cards and Power Failure comes the sweeping tale of a powerful and controversial financial empire, set against the turbulent backdrop of a rapidly changing Wall Street.
On March 22, 2021, Leon Black, the brilliant and fearsome billionaire founder of investment firm Apollo Global Management, resigned. For more than three decades, Apollo had epitomized the new Wall Street, pioneering both private equity and private credit by delivering staggering returns through aggressive takeovers and astute, contrarian bets. But its most powerful figure would eventually be undone by his own poor judgment, including a friendship and business relationship with the disgraced pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and an affair with a Russian woman intent on a shakedown.
Yet the path to that reckoning began long before. When Drexel Burnham Lambert collapsed amid the junk bond crisis of the late 1980s, Apollo rose from its ashes, led by Michael Milken's protégé, a young dealmaker named Leon Black. His financial genius and relentless drive mirrored that of his father, a celebrated Wall Street businessman whose life ended in a shocking scandal and unfathomable tragedy. Black’s inherited appetite for risk propelled him to take Apollo to stratospheric heights—and ultimately to his own spectacular fall from power.
With exclusive access to Apollo's big dealmakers and those who know them best, Money to Burn is a riveting saga of extreme wealth, jealous rivalries, and public disgrace. Through propulsive storytelling and meticulous reporting, William D. Cohan exposes the power struggles, betrayals, and courtroom battles that fueled Apollo's meteoric rise—and how one man's hubris and excess altered the course of a global financial powerhouse.
“Money to Burn is a riveting and astounding exposé of our rotten new Gilded Age. No one is better at spilling the secrets of Wall Street’s high-flying and hard-falling billionaires than the renowned financial journalist William D. Cohan.” —Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money
“William Cohan’s latest exposé, Money to Burn, is a Shakespearean tale of modern hubris on Wall Street . . . [and] a master class in reporting from the hidden power centers of America’s billionaire class. Another must-read from the country’s premier business journalist.” —Susan Glasser, coauthor of The Divider
“Money to Burn is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how one of the most important players on modern Wall Street came to be. It’s one part family saga, one part Shakespearean play, and one part a history of the financial world—and entirely engrossing.” —Bethany McLean, coauthor of The Big Fail and The Smartest Guys in the Room
“William Cohan has the rare ability to translate esoteric Wall Street jargon into elegant, comprehensible words . . . a titan of financial journalism.” —Ken Auletta, author of Hollywood Ending and Googled
William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, has a biweekly opinion column in the New York Times, and writes frequently for the Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post, among other publications. A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, the Columbia University School of Journalism, and the Columbia University Graduate School of Business.
View titles by William D. Cohan
From the bestselling author of House of Cards and Power Failure comes the sweeping tale of a powerful and controversial financial empire, set against the turbulent backdrop of a rapidly changing Wall Street.
On March 22, 2021, Leon Black, the brilliant and fearsome billionaire founder of investment firm Apollo Global Management, resigned. For more than three decades, Apollo had epitomized the new Wall Street, pioneering both private equity and private credit by delivering staggering returns through aggressive takeovers and astute, contrarian bets. But its most powerful figure would eventually be undone by his own poor judgment, including a friendship and business relationship with the disgraced pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and an affair with a Russian woman intent on a shakedown.
Yet the path to that reckoning began long before. When Drexel Burnham Lambert collapsed amid the junk bond crisis of the late 1980s, Apollo rose from its ashes, led by Michael Milken's protégé, a young dealmaker named Leon Black. His financial genius and relentless drive mirrored that of his father, a celebrated Wall Street businessman whose life ended in a shocking scandal and unfathomable tragedy. Black’s inherited appetite for risk propelled him to take Apollo to stratospheric heights—and ultimately to his own spectacular fall from power.
With exclusive access to Apollo's big dealmakers and those who know them best, Money to Burn is a riveting saga of extreme wealth, jealous rivalries, and public disgrace. Through propulsive storytelling and meticulous reporting, William D. Cohan exposes the power struggles, betrayals, and courtroom battles that fueled Apollo's meteoric rise—and how one man's hubris and excess altered the course of a global financial powerhouse.
Reviews
“Money to Burn is a riveting and astounding exposé of our rotten new Gilded Age. No one is better at spilling the secrets of Wall Street’s high-flying and hard-falling billionaires than the renowned financial journalist William D. Cohan.” —Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money
“William Cohan’s latest exposé, Money to Burn, is a Shakespearean tale of modern hubris on Wall Street . . . [and] a master class in reporting from the hidden power centers of America’s billionaire class. Another must-read from the country’s premier business journalist.” —Susan Glasser, coauthor of The Divider
“Money to Burn is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how one of the most important players on modern Wall Street came to be. It’s one part family saga, one part Shakespearean play, and one part a history of the financial world—and entirely engrossing.” —Bethany McLean, coauthor of The Big Fail and The Smartest Guys in the Room
“William Cohan has the rare ability to translate esoteric Wall Street jargon into elegant, comprehensible words . . . a titan of financial journalism.” —Ken Auletta, author of Hollywood Ending and Googled
William D. Cohan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers House of Cards and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, has a biweekly opinion column in the New York Times, and writes frequently for the Financial Times, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post, among other publications. A former investment banker, Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, the Columbia University School of Journalism, and the Columbia University Graduate School of Business.
View titles by William D. Cohan
