Author Talk: Rob Copeland

Please join Wilton Library for a special Author Talk program as award-winning New York Times finance writer Rob Copeland talks about his brand new book The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, and the Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend.

Late last year, when the billionaire founder of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund on the planet, announced 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. Ray 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 a phenomenal illusion, and one of the great feats of hubris in modern memory. These so-called principles endowed upon Dalio the authority to opine on life’s great meanings, which in turn helped transform him into a self-help guru for millions, as money continued to flow into his hedge fund.

The Fund is a page-turning, stranger-than-fiction journey into a rarefied world of wealth and power. 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.

Rob Copeland is a finance reporter for The New York Times. His front-page investigations into Bridgewater Associates won a New York Press Club award.

The media sponsor of our author talks is GOOD Morning Wilton.

Registration is required. Register on the Wilton Library website.