Fun While It Lasted: My Rise and Fall In the Land of Fame and Fortune

His memoir is at its most interesting as he is ascending from humble beginings to a place of wealth and affluence. It's a familiar story, but McNall's tale has a freshness to it. Somehow a coin dealer's evolution into a sports mogule is novel.

Oddly, the book loses momentum when the author is shuffled off to jail. I doubt anyone picked up Bruce McNall's biography to catch a glimpse inside prison life, but his descripion of it is painstaking.

Still, the man is a likable figure, and his story is an enjoyable one.


As Much Fun as a First-rate Magic Show   March 9, 2004
 1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Just as he did in making LA Kings games a wonderfully popular attraction for hockey fans, McNall is providing heaps of fun for us in this memoir of his rise and fall. When watching a magician at work, we know the purpose is entertainment, rather than truth-telling; so, too, this volume is not a true soul-bearing confessional that reveals the internal demons that led McNall to a life of huge financial crimes. His deepest confession -- that he simply wanted to be liked too much -- clearly is a superficial revelation, but we know that McCall intends here to get us to like him (not to really understand him); although a different kind of book that truly exposed the dark side of his being would have been an important contribution, McCall instead succeeds in providing us here a thoroughly enjoyable few hours attending to his breezy recounting of his many colorful, if unlawful, achievements and a summary recounting of how they inevitably led to a 5-year detour behind bars. The worlds he traversed -- trading rare coins, breeding and racing thoroughbred horses, feature-film-making, and building winning sports franchises-- provide enough entertaining vignettes for many books (and many lives!), and we can be thankful that he crammed so much writing into such a manageable and readable volume.


Doing crime, doing lunch   March 2, 2004
 3 out of 3 found this review helpful

It's hard to say which was worse. The man's fixation with his B list celebrity friends even as his life was crumbling around him. (Alan Thicke visited him in jail!) Or his rationalizing a 10 year pattern of fraud even as he claims he is taking responsibility for it. (his first coin collecting partner deserved to be swindled because he drove too hard a bargain; the Hunt brothers weren't really harmed by the fraud he worked on them; the banks practically forced him to defraud them).

The book seems to be written not to understand or explain why he committed frauds in excess of $200 million but to have us know that Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn are very,very dear friends. He mentions hockey players on dozens of pages while his children barely rate a mention until they are dragged in for bathetic effect when he is carted off to jail.

Like Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol, McNall in prison obviously plumbed the depths of his soul in order to understand himself. Why did he commit these massive frauds? Because he wanted too much to be liked. That's what he really said.

His tepid story telling is no compensation for the fact that McNall clearly still believes that doing lunch matters more than doing crime.


Great book and an easy read   December 30, 2003
 1 out of 1 found this review helpful

What an amazing life and well written story! This book does a great job of describing Bruce's quest for the next big high -- from a rare coin, a win at the race track, or turning the Kings into a ice hockey powerhouse.

Easy to read and a very interesting, I would highly recommend this book to anyone!