The Financier

For centuries, humanity has had two unchanging motives: money and power. The gentle, romantic title of the novels about financial schemes—“The Trilogy of Desire”—suggests that Theodore Dreiser understood the nature of human passions perfectly.

The image of Frank Cowperwood is drawn from American millionaire Charles Yerkes. Before our eyes, he rapidly makes his way from a talented young man from a modest family to an influential, unbelievably wealthy figure. Frank doesn’t just earn money with flare—he also wins the love of women and acclaim within the professional world. He is a skilled manipulator, like all people by nature capable of appealing to others. It is precisely this ability, combined with the talent of a financier and a clear head, that makes him an outstanding figure. But the same gifts strip him of moral and ethical compass points, forcing him to ruthlessly discard all barriers of morality in his drive to succeed. He will face both losses and defeats—but in the first major book of the cycle, Frank shines brilliantly, and we admire him along with the author, in many ways not thanks to his virtues, but despite them.

The world of big money doesn’t always smell pleasant, but its laws don’t change for decades. In this sense, The Financier will never go out of date. Its knowledge can be taken like from a finance textbook—only more fascinatingly written. The schemes for making money, as well as the schemes for influencing people, have long been written into the classics of American and world literature.