Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire

by Michael T. Kaufman

A penniless émigré who made a fortune and became one of the great philanthropists of the twentieth century, George Soros has led a remarkable life. This biography brings forth his story in unprecedented depth, from his childhood as a Jew in occupied Budapest during World War II to his conquests on Wall Street and the establishment of his philanthropic Open Society foundations. Soros offers exclusive glimpses at an often misunderstood man, revealing a shy character whose own struggle to escape the Nazis left him with the adamant belief that people of the world are entitled to live without the fear of oppression.

Enigmatic, contradictory, and inspiring, George Soros is one of the most intriguing and globally influential men of our time. In this accomplished biography, written with Soros’s cooperation, Michael T. Kaufman fully illuminates the man, his motivations, and his legacy.

Genres: Biography, Finance, Business, Nonfiction, History

384 pages, Paperback

First published February 19, 2002

Reviews

[Milan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The name of the book should be "Soros: Life Beyond Markets." It gives you a peak into one of the most successful speculator and philanthropist of recent times. This is not the book to learn how he made his money. It gives you a detailed account of his life and his life-changing experiences. It shows the philosophical side of Soros which is not very well-known. The book describes beautifully his early days, escape from the Nazis and his struggles during his student days before he came to Wall Street. This biography tells a great story about the life of Soros. But what I was looking for - a biography of one of the greatest hedge fund managers of all times.

[Gary · Rating 1 out of 5]

Some books as you approach the end, you experience sadness that your great journey will soon be over. And then there is Soros by Kaufman. Oh, how I longed for it to end! What a bore of a man! A privileged Jew of Hungary whose philandering father convinced the family to separate and spend the Holocaust in Hungary pretending to be Christians while he continued his conquest of women at their most vulnerable situation. Meanwhile, George helped the Nazis to steal the best art and artifacts from Jews he most likely knew. Then as the Soviets took over he collaborated with them as well with his father's help. Escaping to the West he went to school in London all the while ungrateful that no one recognized his self proclaimed brilliance. Deciding he should be a philosopher he latched on to one he thought would find him brilliant, instead, he found him so forgettable that he did not recall meeting him. But George had a knack for making money through various legal and illegal methods. He amassed a fortune and soon found it gave him power over women and even governments. He dumped wife one and obtained a trophy wife whom he bought a college to give her a career. And he funded Communists in China, Hungary, Russia, the Baltics, and the US to push his Communist and globalist philosophies on governments and citizens. A godless and America hating sad man who will perhaps sooner rather than later leave this earth unprepared for what is to come, his biography adds nothing of value to him or our world. A sad look at greed, arrogance, selfishness, and worldliness.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

According to Kaufman, Soros is a great guy and philanthropist although he had some problems with his personal life (odd parents, also he is now divorced from his first wife and his relationship with his kids is not that great)and he did cause the collapse (20% devaluation) of the British monetary system (but that is OK, because it was so clever that he was able to have that big of an effect and make so much money). Oh yeah, and some people, including the president of Malaysia, said there was proof Soros was involved in the 1997 economic disaster in Asia, specifically Malaysia. However because the president of Malaysia used Jewish slurs against Soros, none of that mattered.

The book included many photos which I found very interesting. I learned that George Soros looked like a girl when he was five. If I were George, I would have burned that photo and gotten a hair cut.

I'm sure George Soros has contributed money to many needy sources, but I kept feeling like I wasn't getting the entire picture. When I read on P. 165 a list of world changing men that placed Che Guevara with Gandhi and Martin Luther King, I knew I wouldn't shake that feeling. The author then added Soros to that list.

I still wonder what the title means. I found this "of or relating to any popular leader promising deliverance or an ideal era of peace and prosperity" among definitions largely referring to Christ for messianic. I always think of Christ when I think of the Messiah, so is the author placing Soros beside Christ?

[Albert · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is not a biography of the Soros most of us are interested in. This is a biography of Soros's philanthropy. Not at all interesting

[Scott Benowitz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a biography of George Soros which was written by a former staff writer for The New York Times.
George Soros' life story is absolutely fascinating and potentially inspiring. This book has been very thoroughly researched, and this book does do a great job of detailing the events of George Soros' life to date.
I do recommend this book because it's a very well written and well researched biography of a very interesting person.
I'm also going to recommend this book for another reason.
I read several different news websites which are based in different countries every day, and in the reader's comments sections, I'm constantly seeing people attempting to link George Soros to events which are occurring throughout the world today which he has absolutely zero involvement in whatsoever. If people would make the effort to do some reading about George Soros, they'd see that there's zero (0) basis for any of the conspiracy theories about him.
This book clears up many of the common misconceptions about George Soros, AND this book also explains the reasons that so many people tend to attempt to link him to numerous events which have nothing whatsoever to do with him. Without saying too much, back in the 1980's and into the early 1990's, George Soros DID send a lot of funds to various organizations throughout eastern Europe which were attempting to overthrow the communist governments which had been in power at the time. He did intentionally conceal his role in sending funds to those organizations, and he revealed his role in sending funds to those organizations several years later. Because he had at one time been secretly sending large sums of money to numerous organizations which had been operating illegally in former communist countries (the organizations that I'm referring to were considered to be "subversive" by the communists in the countries that they'd been operating in), in the present day people tend to seem to guess that he's secretly involved in numerous events which are occurring throughout the world today which have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with him. I wish that people would read this book before they post comments about George Soros on news websites which contain very inaccurate information about him.

One more note about this book: George Soros has written several books which are about various topics in economics and global politics. However, he has not written any books which are about himself and his own life. I don't know if there are any other biographies which have been written about him aside from this book. If you're engaged in some research about him, this book does provide most of the details of the events of his life dating from his childhood years in the 1930's up through the beginning of the 2000's, when this book was published.

[Pablo Castro · Rating 5 out of 5]

A master piece, a biography of a man who made a billion in a day. I highly recommend it as it goes deep into who Soros and who is philosopher king.

It is a good read!

[Kathleen Hulser · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kaufman mines the rich veins of Soroslore in this readable biography. While the author fails to explain the paradox of the great riches, dispensed to progressive causes by a hard-core free marketeer, he offers the reader much evidence to navigate the contradictions. The tales of the family hiding from Nazis in wartime Budapest and Lake Balaton are stunning, although clearly wealth helped them hide, there are plenty of close calls. Soros imagines himself a philosopher, and Kaufman gamely struggles to convey the billionaire's fascination with the theories of Karl Popper. The Viennese-born philosopher is best known for his rejection of the inductive scientific method, advocating instead a theory of falsification which treats knowledge as provisional and infinitely subject to revision. That idea in turn underpins his famous advocacy of "the open society," a model of contentious democracy that constantly tests truth by allowing the free argument of differing ideas. Bertrand Russell was an admirer of Popper along with Hayek, whose views do not exactly line up.

Soros has himself frequently published books about how his world view has allowed him to become a giant money-maker. But in addition to his faculty of self-criticism and constant revision of his own preferences and decision-making, Soros clearly had a unique faculty of rapid judgement and confidence in the face of headwinds and financial orthodoxy. Meanwhile, on the philanthropy side, Soros brilliantly pioneered small scale interventions that proved to have ripple effects. Supplying Eastern Europe with copiers was one such effort that seeded the quiet revolutions in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. His money has supported the Alwin Nikolais dance company, the founding of the Central Park Conservancy, the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, vast numbers of students abroad and the prison reform movement -- to name just a few of the many causes nourished by the Open Society Fund. Soros has been a hands-on philanthropist, making seat of the pants decisions, hiring and firing with gusto, pouring unprecedented amounts into single issues. For anyone interested in the overlap of late-stage capitalism and social justice, he is a figure worth scrutiny, embodying the virtues and faults of Western societies undergoing huge transformations in the wake of WWII.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

A genuinely inspiring book. We talk a lot about Warren Buffet, but I've read biographies of both Buffet and Soros, and Soros comes across as a far more involved and interesting character than Buffet, whom I think of as really more like some crazy talented investing genius but not much else. Kaufman's biography is literary in tone, as befits a former correspondent and editor of the New York Times, and balanced in approach. It sort of divides neatly into two halves, the first dealing with Soros' childhood, upbringing and early career, the other with his philanthropy. There are a few short notes on how he made his fortune, but don't read this book if you want to know how to get rich like Soros. (Soros is said to eject dinner table guests who ask him where to put their money.) Rather, its an insight into his modus operandi, the style of his analysis and decision making, and how his early and continuing interest in philosophy led him to develop a personal theory of historical dynamics that he applied successfully to the markets and political economy. What impressed me deeply was his early commitment to supporting democratic reform in the Eastern European states, long before the Western state powers got around to doing it. His projects involved spending hundreds of millions connecting Russian universities to the internet, supporting scientific and humanistic researchers and journalists, early education, etc. The range and depth of his work - mostly conducted in the 80s and 90s and largely wound down now as he prefers to cut funding rather than let institutions grow into bureacratic behemoths - is inspiring. And it (i) persuades me that financiers can lead stimulating lives with social networks cast far beyond their business associates, (ii) convinces me further that it is not the skill one possesses that determines whether one will be a useful citizen or not, it is how that skill is applied.

[Todd Wilhelm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting, well written view into the life of the globalist George Soros. A review of one of his books in the Economist had this to say "Because of who he is, there will always be buyers for his books, publishers for his books, and cash-strapped academics to say flattering things about his books. None of this alters the fact that his books are no good."
-pages 320-321

This summarizes my feelings on not only his book writing ability, but his overall philosophy of life. Soros is great at making money, although even in that endeavor it is hard to believe he accomplished what he did without benefit of some insider knowledge. What he has to say, what he thinks, the causes he supports are given instant credibility and recognition simply because he is wealthy.

A couple of things I like about Soros - he rarely watches television and he is an avid reader!

[srdjan · Rating 2 out of 5]

subject matter is a necessary ingredient of, but insufficient recipe for, a good book

[Srinivasan Iyengar]

Good book and one that gives a rare and deep insight into the life of the mystery man called George Soros. Well written and devoid of any dramatisation which makes the reading a pleasure

[Vicki Gooding · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is well written, but it did not create within me an admiration, or liking of the man. He has changed the social order of many things throughout the world if you happen to be a liberal. Is that why he's referred to as Messianic? He started his gain making by robbing from the Jews of art to give to the Nazi's. So reference of messianic billionaire is really stretching it. He may have been born a Jew but his actions are not divine. He supports and funds educations and racial motivated projects of a left leaning philosophy. The man is a genius with money. He has given much of that money to change or enhance world philosophy. He has also used his money to damage other countries wealth to enhance his own. Only the reader can determine if that is admirable. Whether for reasons of philanthropy, or for the love of money and power will be in light of the eyes who read this. The book reveals the personal side of Soros. How he has become who he is. I am of personal belief living past 2002 it has become easier to recognize how his funding of the main stream media (silencing any view other than it's own), the funding of organizations who kill, lute and destroy in the name of racial equity... I just wonder at the time we stand before our creator how we can justify willingly financing those who crush and destroy anyone of opposing philosophies, just because you have resources to fund those to go out and make it happen. Globalist, elitist, tyrants who claim tolerance unless you believe in sovereignty of individual & country.

[Wandering Star · Rating 2 out of 5]

The beginning was interesting but the remainder dragged on. Overall, the author who knew Soros personally, did not provide a balanced view. This was not an entirely objective take on "the man behind the curtain." The author painted Soros in a favorable light without substantially addressing criticisms of Soros's philosophy and financial influences. Moreover, the author should have provided more of a detailed, well-balanced analysis of what made Soros rather notorious in the first place, the September 16 1992 financial event known as Black Wednesday.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned a lot about George Soros who I only really knew about because of his financial accomplishments. The book is split up into 3 sections that focus on his early life, his life in finance and how he made his fortune, and then on his philanthropies. Some of the financial stories and market descriptions went over my head though.

[Bernardo Pinheiro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pretty good book, written by a journalist about the different aspects of Soros’ life. The book reflects in a pretty interesting way the trade off in Soros’ life, where he tries to balance his financial success with moral, philosophy and delivering something back to the world. Definitely worth reading 👌

[Adam Napoletano · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok book. The first part about his background was very interesting, but 2/3 of the book was about his philanthropy, instead of "what drove him" or "what lead him to success. Still interesting, but that is what I was looking for.

[John Curtice · Rating 1 out of 5]

Puff piece on political programs. Almost nothing useful or relevant on markets. Written by someone employed by him on the philanthropy side.

[Superkermit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice read, 3 out of 5.
Soros gets 10 out of 5. What an inspiring personality and what an impressive achievements in supporting so many societies and individuals

[Luis Miguel · Rating 3 out of 5]

i gave up halfway since it made no sense to keep going. not interesting enough without the finance part.

[Pyoungsung Choi · Rating 2 out of 5]

소로스의 전기를 읽고 느낀 점은 유명한 투자가들이 늙으면 젊을 때의 총기를 다 잃는 것인가 하는가 하는 점이다. 워렌 버핏도 쉘비 데이비스도 노년에는 눈에 띄게 수익률과 활동이 줄어든 모습을 보였다. 그리고 모두들 하나같이 가족들과의 불화가 있었다. 스스로 반성해보기도 하고, 꼭 저런 삶을 살아야만 부라는 것이 따르나 싶어 두렵기도 하다. 어린 시절과 아버지의 교육철학 부분은 재미있었으나 나머지 부분은 큰 재미는 없고, 특히 3부인 자선사업 등의 돈을 쓰는 과정은 지루했다. 전쟁과 인종박해 속에서 생존을 위해 순간순간의 판단에 의지해 오면서 만든 통찰력을 보면서 유년 시절의 경험이 오늘날의 소로스를 만든 것이 아닌가 싶다.

[SusanJean Hoover · Rating 3 out of 5]

We should be afraid, very afraid, of this man

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

A window into the experiences which shaped Soros as a child and how it played out in his philanthropic work

[Chris Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

George Soros had for two decades been a mystery to me -- a Wall Street tycoon with a decidedly left-wing emphasis. Michael T. Kaufman does a yeoman's job unraveling the childhood stories and young-adult experiences that shaped the subject of this biography. The book does not follow a strictly chronological path, but rather divides itself into discrete, almost independent chapters. I can visualize the author's research cards stacked into neatly divided piles and then given a narrative to portray the humanity, the fallibility, and the generosity of George Soros. Well done.