Description: Who have been the wealthiest people of the past 1,000 years? Certainly Bill Gates. But how about the African King Mansa Musa, who, like Gates, built an ostentatiously fabulous home, employed legions of fawning retainers, and had a knack for turning money into more money? There were differences, of course. Mansa Musa executed anyone who sneezed in his presence, whereas Bill Gates merely cuts back on their stock options. When it came to really flaunting it, though, Gates was a piker compared to Mansa Musa, who had a nugget of gold so big he tethered his horse to it.

Cynthia Crossen provides us with a winning combination: fascinating portraits of the lives and times of ten of the richest people of the millennium, tied together through an important theme -- the fundamental nature of wealth accumulation has changed, transforming the world in the process. At the start of the millennium, the truly wealthy rarely created large amounts of new wealth. The richest relied on plunder and ransom and the assets of the world were static. However, as the millennium progressed, people like Richard Arkwright, Jacob Fugger, Hetty Green, and Bill Gates found ways to create wealth that not only enriched themselves but many others as well.

We're endlessly fascinated by the rich. The Rich and How They Got That Way is the story of how they got it and what they did with it. It is also the story of how wealth has become democratized and wide-spread. And the book will name the "Richest Person of the Millennium."

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