Book Report – A Truck Full of Money by Tracy Kidder

Paul English has seemingly never been comfortable having money, at least not a ton of it. English, the co-founder of Kayak who personally cleared $120 million after the travel industry search engine was acquired by Priceline in 2012, gives of his windfall quite generously and in fact did so even from a prior – albeit much smaller – web company transaction. As outlined in Pulitzer Prize winning author Tracy Kidder’s terrific new biography A Truck Full of Money, this particular entrepreneur sees wealth as a “fictitious thing created to facilitate trade and for building things,” saying that hoarding it is a disaster. Beneficiaries of this mindset include his employees, Boston’s homeless, and a Haitian community in dire need of new schools. English may love his fast cars and nice homes, but he’s haunted by the thought that somehow he’s deserving of his fortune, believing rather that he’s simply someone who’s lucky to possess a talent mix that happens to create great wealth.

Credit for this abundance mentality goes to one Thomas J. White whom English calls his hero and “chief adviser though deceased.” White, a Boston construction magnate, philanthropist, and (as stated in his obituary) the patron saint of hopeless causes, spent his final ten years on earth – his 80’s – playing the role of mentor to English, showing the younger man the countless people in need of their help. Indeed, Kayak was founded in part after White had presented English what true desperation looks like on a mission the two took to Haiti, what with its “ruined roads and dirt-floored huts all along the way to the hospital, where patients lay on the verge of death,” with the goal being the launch of a company that would make “an obscene amount of money” from referral fees and ads from users’ comprehensive travel searches. Done. A substantial chunk of the post-sale bounty has been poured into Summit Education, founded by English to assist hundreds of teachers and thousands of students in Haiti’s Central Plateau. And lest one think this is some run-of-the-mill white savior program that ostensibly hands out fish, the aim is “vastly improved, indigenous public education” delivered by the country’s citizens in their native tongue, Creole.

Good works and progress aside, there’s a distinct heartsickness that comes with this calling when one realizes there is only so much that can be done, whether at home or abroad. English, problem fixing engineer to his core, badly wants to help end homelessness and yet learns that most of his fellow Bostonians who “sleep rough” are bound to never recover from their ailments and abuses, most having never held a job in their adult lives. Oftentimes the best you can do is hand out clean socks to those destined to live on the street, victims of what Kidder terms “a skewed economy and an indifferent government.” The book is loaded with these sorts of insights, including the terrific suggestion to distribute Dunkin’ Donuts gift cards to needy folks on the street, giving them not only access to a hot beverage but a clean restroom as well. Less important are the book’s passages on our hero’s other start-ups – an incubator/nightclub, anyone? – and romantic life, but that’s nitpicking. Kidder, known well for The Soul of a New Machine, captures here the soul of a man in middle age, restless and desperate to put money to work. It’s perfect reading at the holidays when one realizes the only thing they need is the warm feeling that comes from sharing good fortune.