The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune

In 1988, Forbes Magazine hailed Chuck Feeney as the twenty-third richest American alive. Born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, to a blue-collar Irish American family during the Depression, Feeney had served in the Korean War and made a fortune as cofounder of Duty Free Shoppers, the world's largest duty-free retail chain. But secretly, Feeney had already transferred all his wealth to his foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies. Only in 1997, when he sold his duty-free interests, was he "outed" as one of the greatest and most mysterious American philanthropists in modern times. The Billionaire Who Wasn't is a tale of one of the greatest retail triumphs of the twentieth century, and of what happens to a unique man and his family when confronted with wealth beyond imagining.