The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, and the Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend

The unauthorized, unvarnished story of famed Wall Street hedge-fund manager Ray Dalio. An instant New York Times bestseller! Ray Dalio does not want you to read this book. When the billionaire founder of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund on the planet, announced in 2022 that he was stepping down from the company he started out of his apartment nearly 50 years ago, the news made headlines around the world. Dalio cultivated an aura of international admiration and fame thanks to his company's eye-popping success, coupled with a mystique he encouraged with frequent media appearances, celebrity hobnobbing, and his bestselling book, Principles. In The Fund, award-winning New York Times journalist Rob Copeland punctures this carefully-constructed narrative of the benevolent business titan, exposing his much-promoted "principles" as one of the great feats of hubris in modern memory--in practice, they encouraged a toxic culture of paranoia and backstabbing. The Fund is a page-turning, stranger-than-fiction journey into a rarefied world of wealth and power. It offers an unflinching look at the pain so often caused by the "radical transparency" Dalio has described as a core tenet of his recipe for business success and a meaningful life. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with those inside and around the firm, Copeland takes readers into the room as former FBI director Jim Comey kisses Dalio's ring, recent Pennsylvania Senate candidate David McCormick drinks the Kool-Aid, and a rotating cast of memorable characters grapple with their personal psychological and moral limits--all under the watchful eye of their charismatic leader. This is a cautionary tale for anyone convinced that the ability to make lots of money has anything at all to do with unlocking the principles of human nature.

About the Author :
Rob Copeland is a finance reporter for the New York Times. He was previously the longtime hedge-fund beat reporter at the Wall Street Journal, and his reporting has also covered Silicon Valley and the hidden worlds of the wealthy and powerful. His front-page investigations into Bridgewater Associates won a New York Press Club award; he was also awarded an honorable mention twice by the Society of American Business Writers (SABEW) and was named a News Media Alliance "Rising Star" (formerly "Top 30 Under 30"). He has appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America," NPR and other major news networks.

Review :
"This is a terrific dagger of a book packed with cringey detail...one of the better books ever written about Wall Street....The Fund is the perfect rage-read." --New York Times Book Review "At last, the era of the billionaire philosopher-king has a defining book. The Fund is a taut, nonfiction thriller." --Bryan Burrough, author of Barbarians at the Gate "A classic American story about the most famous man on Wall Street--or the person he seems to be. The Fund manages to both shock and entertain at the same time." --Philipp Meyer, bestselling author of American Rust and The Son "The most explosive, mind-blowing business book I've ever read--and the most fun, too." --Bradley Hope, co-author of the New York Times bestseller Billion Dollar Whale and Pulitzer Prize finalist "Devastating...full of delectably awful anecdotes." --Bethany McLean, bestselling author of The Smartest Guys in the Room "It's a great book...everyone should read it!" --Kara Swisher, co-host of the podcast Pivot "It would be funny if it weren't so tragic" --Andy Kessler, The Wall Street Journal "The book indicts the culture of Bridgewater as a hothouse of authoritarian nuttery: quasi-religious fanaticism and fantastical greed ruled by surveillance, fear and show trials presided over by a man they called 'the Godfather' -- James Comey -- working to sate his emperor's whims." --Steve Schmidt, MSNBC political analyst, founder of "The Lincoln Project" "Writing with droll aplomb, Copeland takes a torch to Dalio's reputation as a Wall Street savant...the result is a hugely entertaining depiction of unbridled wealth colliding with unhinged folly." --Publishers Weekly "A closely observed investigation...Copeland's history of the firm benefits from deep sourcing, drawing on new on-the-record interviews, internal documents, and multiple leaked e-mails...[offering] a vivid snapshot of Dalio's psyche." --The New Yorker (Best Books of 2023) "An unsettling exposé of a leading investment fund....A vivid portrait of soul-killing micromanagement in a ruthless corporate setting." --Kirkus "A jaw-dropping narrative...Financial reporter Rob Copeland has written a book that blows apart the mystique of Bridgewater and the man at its center. The Fund manages the improbable task of living up to its strapline of 'unravelling' a Wall Street legend." --Financial Times "Weird... Dalio may be anxious for the rest of us to move on from this book. But it offers a rare, vivid, and disturbing glimpse at a hedge fund that seems to have leaned too far into crafting a corporate culture. And much of that history has been kept a secret until now." --Fortune "Copeland's gripping book exposes the cult-like culture at Ray Dalio's Bridgewater Associates." --Spear's "An epic page-turner...reads like the slimmest of thrillers." --The Messenger "A hedge fund horror story." --The Australian "A page-turning portrait of a bully and bullshit artist--and, more fundamentally, a damning indictment of the elite compulsion to conflate wealth with genius." --The Lever