The book starts at Cynthia and Adam's wedding and you get a sense early on about these characters and their lack of moral tether. Their relationships to their families are strained and distant. Neither one really seems to care much for anyone but each other. (The one constant in the book is their love for each other. You half expect the success and money to tempt them into infidelity, as it often does. Money can buy anything - but they remain faithful to each other and to their quest for more.)
The book is written in sections that jump in years and covers their early marriage and birth of their two children when they are very young. They are always the youngest parents at Dalton School functions and the other older parents look at them with a bit of jealousy. We then witness the children at various stages of their lives. The daughter goes the route of bored and spoiled rich girl who gets involved with the club scene in NY and drugs and a near-death overdoses. The son, Jonas, is the odd one in the family. He is not smitten with money and what it can bring, but instead chooses to live, as a student at the U of Chicago, quite simply.
There is so much to this book about greed, immorality, insider trading, unscrupulous "deals" and the quest for more, not so much for what it can bring, but instead for the "thrill" that it gives Adam to be able to pull it all off.
At one point, I felt that it would become a story of the rise and fall of Adam, but he doesn't fall; he gets away with his schemes. He and Cynthia have no guilt because they start huge foundations and give away millions of dollars to all kinds of great causes. This launders their misdeeds.
The ending of the book was very strange. I read the last page a few times. I want to hear the author talk about that conclusion and how he ended the book. I won't give it away. Just read it!
