The $12 Million Stuffed Shark
The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art
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Narrated by:
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Adam Verner
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By:
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Don Thompson
About this listen
Why would a smart New York investment banker pay $12 million for the decaying, stuffed carcass of a shark? By what alchemy does Jackson Pollock's drip painting "No. 5, 1948" sell for $140 million?
Intriguing and entertaining, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark is a Freakonomics approach to the economics and psychology of the contemporary art world. Why were record prices achieved at auction for works by 131 contemporary artists in 2006 alone, with astonishing new heights reached in 2007? Don Thompson explores the money, lust, and self-aggrandizement of the art world in an attempt to determine what makes a particular work valuable while others are ignored.
This book is the first to look at the economics and the marketing strategies that enable the modern art market to generate such astronomical prices. Drawing on interviews with both past and present executives of auction houses and art dealerships, artists, and the buyers who move the market, Thompson launches the listener on a journey of discovery through the peculiar world of modern art. Surprising, passionate, gossipy, and revelatory, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark reveals a great deal that even experienced auction purchasers do not know.
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Six months after its American introduction in 1985, the Yugo was a punch line; within a year, it was a staple of late-night comedy. By 2000, NPR's Car Talk declared it "the worst car of the millennium." And for most Americans that's where the story begins and ends. Hardly. The short, unhappy life of the car, the men who built it, the men who imported it, and the decade that embraced and discarded it is rollicking and astounding, and it is one of the greatest untold business-cum-morality tales of the 1980s.
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Better Than The Car!
- By Chris Reich on 08-25-10
By: Jason Vuic
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Blockbusters
- Hit-making, Risk-taking, and the Big Business of Entertainment
- By: Anita Elberse
- Narrated by: Renee Raudman
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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What's behind the phenomenal success of entertainment businesses such as Warner Bros., Marvel Entertainment, and the NFL — along with such stars as Jay-Z, Lady Gaga, and LeBron James? Which strategies give leaders in film, television, music, publishing, and sports an edge over their rivals? Anita Elberse, Harvard Business School's expert on the entertainment industry, has done pioneering research on the worlds of media and sports for more than a decade. Now, in this groundbreaking audiobook, she explains a powerful truth about the fiercely competitive world of entertainment.
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I love the autobook the only thing I have
- By brycesp on 03-31-17
By: Anita Elberse
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The Money Culture
- By: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Alexander Cendese
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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The 1980s was the most outrageous and turbulent era in the financial market since the crash of ’29, not only on Wall Street but around the world. Michael Lewis, as a trainee at Salomon Brothers in New York and as an investment banker and later financial journalist, was uniquely positioned to chronicle the ambition and folly that fueled the decade. In these trenchant, often hilarious true tales we meet the colorful movers and shakers who commanded the headlines and rewrote the rules.
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Not the normal great Michael Lewis
- By Me on 05-12-12
By: Michael Lewis
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Tap Dancing to Work
- Warren Buffett on Practically Everything, 1966–2012: A Fortune Magazine Book
- By: Carol J. Loomis
- Narrated by: Susan Boyce, Barry Press
- Length: 17 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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When Carol Loomis first mentioned a little-known Omaha hedge-fund manager in a 1966 Fortune article, she didn’t dream that Warren Buffett would one day be considered the world’s greatest investor - nor that she and Buffett would become close personal friends. Now Loomis has collected and updated the best Buffett articles Fortune published between 1966 and 2012, including thirteen cover stories and a dozen pieces authored by Buffett himself. Loomis has provided commentary about each major article that supplies context and her own informed point of view.
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A collection of finance articles - not a biography
- By Gerardo A Dada on 08-23-13
By: Carol J. Loomis
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Provenance
- How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art
- By: Laney Salisbury, Aly Sujo
- Narrated by: Marty Peterson
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Here is a tautly paced investigation of one the 20th century's most audacious art frauds, which generated hundreds of forgeries - many of them still hanging in prominent museums and private collections today. Provenance is the extraordinary narrative of one of the most far-reaching and elaborate deceptions in art history.
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Fabulous story, terrible narration almost ruined
- By Sharonia on 02-24-13
By: Laney Salisbury, and others
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Phishing for Phools
- The Economics of Manipulation and Deception
- By: George A. Akerlof, Robert J. Shiller
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Ever since Adam Smith, the central teaching of economics has been that free markets provide us with material well-being, as if by an invisible hand. In Phishing for Phools, Nobel Prize-winning economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller deliver a fundamental challenge to this insight, arguing that markets harm as well as help us. As long as there is profit to be made, sellers will systematically exploit our psychological weaknesses and our ignorance through manipulation and deception.
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Useful for a certain audience, but ...
- By Philo on 02-29-16
By: George A. Akerlof, and others
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The Map Thief
- The Gripping Story of an Esteemed Rare-Map Dealer Who Made Millions Stealing Priceless Maps
- By: Michael Blanding
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Maps have long exerted a special fascination on viewers - both as beautiful works of art and as practical tools to navigate the world. But to those who collect them, the map trade can be a cutthroat business, inhabited by quirky and sometimes disreputable characters in search of a finite number of extremely rare objects.
Once considered a respectable antiquarian map dealer, E. Forbes Smiley spent years doubling as a map thief - until he was finally arrested slipping maps out of books in the Yale University library.
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A Study of the Strangeness of People
- By Carole T. on 12-10-14
By: Michael Blanding
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Pound Foolish
- Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry
- By: Helaine Olen
- Narrated by: Lyn Landon
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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For the past few decades, Americans have spent billions of dollars on personal finance products. As salaries have stagnated and companies have cut back on benefits, we've taken matters into our own hands, embracing the can-do attitude that if we're smart enough, we can overcome even daunting financial obstacles. But that's not true. In this meticulously reported and shocking audiobook, journalist and former financial columnist Helaine Olen goes behind the curtain of the personal finance industry to expose the myths, contradictions, and outright lies it has perpetuated.
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The dark side of my industry
- By jfoxcpacfp on 06-15-13
By: Helaine Olen
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The Billionaire's Vinegar
- The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine
- By: Benjamin Wallace
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 5 hrs and 49 mins
- Abridged
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It was the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold. In 1985, at a heated auction by Christie’s of London, a 1787 bottle of Château Lafite Bordeaux - one of a cache of bottles unearthed in a bricked-up Paris cellar and supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson - went for $156,000 to a member of the Forbes family. The discoverer of the bottle was pop-band manager turned wine collector Hardy Rodenstock, who had a knack for finding extremely old and exquisite wines. But rumors about the bottle soon arose.
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Not just for enophiles
- By Julie W. Capell on 06-03-09
By: Benjamin Wallace
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Frenemies
- The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business (And Everything Else)
- By: Ken Auletta
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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An intimate and profound reckoning with the changes buffeting the $2 trillion global advertising and marketing business from the perspective of its most powerful players, by the best-selling author of Googled. Advertising and marketing touches on every corner of our lives, and is the invisible fuel powering almost all media. Complain about it though we might, without it the world would be a darker place. And of all the industries wracked by change in the digital age, few have been turned on its head as dramatically as this one has.
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Good; not for beginners
- By DV on 10-05-18
By: Ken Auletta
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How Chuck Feeney Made and Gave Away a Fortune
- The Billionaire Who Wasn't
- By: Conor O'Clery
- Narrated by: Erik Synnestvedt
- Length: 16 hrs
- Unabridged
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In 1988 Forbes magazine hailed Chuck Feeney as the 23rd richest American alive. No one knew until then that he was extremely wealthy. Or was he? Born during the Depression in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Feeney had made a fortune as co-founder of Duty Free Shoppers, the world's largest duty-free retail chain. How he did it is one of the great untold retail stories of modern times. The greater untold story is that Feeney had in fact given away his fortune, in its totality, to endow Atlantic Philanthropies - one of the most generous and secretive philanthropic funds in the world.
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Horizons I never knew were there!
- By DTU_Garza on 08-13-17
By: Conor O'Clery
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Painful pronunciation issues!
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What listeners say about The $12 Million Stuffed Shark
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Claire Purcell
- 09-17-18
A fun educational listen
This book is great, a little dated but the facts are still true and the insights offered are invaluable. If you've ever been interested in contemporary art, art auctions, or the ridiculous prices paid for art this is the book for you!
and whats great is that there is no prior knowledge required, the author lays it all out in a very accessible way! I highly recommend this book
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1 person found this helpful
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- Dirk Dev
- 07-19-24
Peeking In Art Business
A reveal of what goes on in the art business. My ignorance is astounding, is the take home message after finishing this audiobook. I wish I had read this before paying for art reported as a wise investment. Oh, some art is worthy. But the vast majority has value only as something to enjoy. Did your talented great uncle paint it? Add in sentimental meaning. Do go to galleries and artfairs. Tour art museums. Buy what you like but beware claims of appreciating wealth.
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- Amazon Customer
- 02-14-23
Loved every minute of this book
This book was more insightful about the industry, than what I already new. An exceptional industry tool.
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- Anonymous
- 02-10-23
Freakonomics for the Art World
Interesting stories that explain the mechanics of the art world and how & why they came into existence. And also how they can be explained by economic principles, especially those of pricing theory.
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- Claire B.
- 03-13-23
Insightful
I was told to read / listen to this book to understand NFTs. It was indeed fascinating and helped me understand what appears to be irrational NFT markets.
Main downsides are that the book is detailed with lots of names and numbers, which can be tedious at time. The audiobook was perfect to fall asleep. Narrator is good (not amazing) and has terrible French prononciation; as a native French speaker I couldn’t even guess what he was saying it was so bad.
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- kyle wiles
- 12-21-20
a fun look at art pricing
Lots of fun stories about art pricing, according to the book it's built off anecdotes but it's all very entertaining
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1 person found this helpful
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- Brynna
- 07-08-20
Dry but helpful
If you’re looking for a riveting tale of art world personalities, you won’t find it here. However, I found this book immensely helpful. It felt more like a textbook than anything, but it taught me a lot. Very helpful for learning more about economics and contemporary art. Highly recommended to anyone looking to work in the art world.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Phyllis
- 01-21-19
Repetitive & Dry
Could use a good editor. Author manages to turn potentially fascinating information into a slog through dull chapters. Narration fine but could not save the book.
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3 people found this helpful