A new book by noted family wealth expert Greg Curtis takes a different tack in showing how wealthy dynasties can thrive and survive.

An old adage in journalism – and in certain other fields of life as well – is “show, don’t tell”. Instead of explaining an idea in the abstract, it is better to illustrate it through real-life events and people. This is one reason why case studies, even if the subjects have their privacy protected by changing names, can be so potent.

A well-known practitioner in the field of protecting and growing family wealth is Gregory Curtis, chairman and founder of Greycourt & Co, a wealth advisory firm working with families and endowments. Curtis has already set out ideas for people who want to set up family offices and guard wealth in books such as Creative Capital and The Stewardship of Wealth. Both were substantial books with a mass of detail explaining the hows and whys of wealth management. 

In his latest book, Family Capital: Working With Wealthy Families to Manage Their Money Across Generations, Curtis decides to create an entire case study, using a real family under the fictional name of the Titan family, chronicling its rise to riches, and the subsequent struggles and reverses, and then the story of how the family descendants hired advisors, took investment and estate planning decisions, and how well or poorly their achieved their objectives.

The 326-page book isn’t a fast read, but the real dialogue that is relayed (with some edits), gives the journey of the Titans an immediacy and freshness that is unusual in the sometimes dry world of investment books. Curtis makes the issues really come alive across 11 chapters. In chapter 1, for example, the Titan family is introduced (it is founded by a poor Italian immigrant); we then move to the mid-1970s and the terrible stock bear market of the time, and then fast-forward to 2005 and the actions of the fifth-generation Titans. The search for an advisor is described; the challenge of creating an investment policy statement is set out, and the various twists and turns of the process – including issues around education and performance reporting – are described without ever getting mired in jargon.

This isn’t necessarily the kind of book for a novice – Curtis may hope that readers will have checked out his earlier works to get a sense of the issues. But what the format of his latest book does achieve is a real sense of the journey a family goes through when it comes to acquiring, guarding and growing wealth. Narratives are powerful because they render abstract ideas concrete and appeal to the sense of life of the reader. This isn’t fiction – there are no flights of fancy here – but more a kind of “fly-on-the-wall” documentary, or mini-series historical account. I am sure readers of this publication will find Curtis’ book an arresting tale that manages to be informative and engaging at the same time.

The book is published by Wiley.