Dark Towers

Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction

By: David Enrich

Narrated by: B. J. Harrison

Length: 13 hrs and 11 mins

Publisher's Summary

"In Dark Towers, David Enrich tells the story of how one of the world's mightiest banks careened off the rails, threatening everything from our financial system to our democracy through its reckless entanglement with Donald Trump. Darkly fascinating and yet all too real, it's a tale that will keep you up at night." (John Carreyrou, Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times best-selling author of Bad Blood)

A searing exposé of the most scandalous bank in the world, including its shadowy ties to Donald Trump's business empire

On a rainy Sunday in 2014, a senior executive at Deutsche Bank was found hanging in his London apartment. Bill Broeksmit had helped build the 150-year-old financial institution into a global colossus, and his sudden death was a mystery, made more so by the bank's efforts to deter investigation. Broeksmit, it turned out, was a man who knew too much.

In Dark Towers, award-winning journalist David Enrich reveals the truth about Deutsche Bank and its epic path of devastation. Tracing the bank's history back to its propping up of a default-prone American developer in the 1880s, helping the Nazis build Auschwitz, and wooing Eastern Bloc authoritarians, he shows how in the 1990s, via a succession of hard-charging executives, Deutsche made a fateful decision to pursue Wall Street riches, often at the expense of ethics and the law.

Soon, the bank was manipulating markets, violating international sanctions to aid terrorist regimes, scamming investors, defrauding regulators, and laundering money for Russian oligarchs. Ever desperate for an American foothold, Deutsche also started doing business with a self-promoting real estate magnate nearly every other bank in the world deemed too dangerous to touch: Donald Trump. Over the next 20 years, Deutsche executives loaned billions to Trump, the Kushner family, and an array of scandal-tarred clients, including convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. 

Dark Towers is the never-before-told saga of how Deutsche Bank became the global face of financial recklessness and criminality - the corporate equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction. It is also the story of a man who was consumed by fear of what he'd seen at the bank - and his son's obsessive search for the secrets he kept. 

©2020 David Enrich (P)2020 HarperAudio

Trying really hard to pay attention

Im so sorry to say this but the performance is killing this title. Its like they aren’t aware of the words they are reading and just following a repetitive trance like mantra. I have to keep going back and try hard to hear the words . I fell asleep at my desk after a cup of coffee. He would be great for guided meditation but i really want to hear this book while I’m getting things done. Could you guys just hire the guy from
Russian roulette for politics or like Neil Gaiman for like everything. The narrator does not match the content one bit. I am sure he’s lovely .

The content is solid, the performer is problematic

The book is as expected -- provides good history, context, insights, details, etc.

But the reader / performer is borderline un-listen-able. Primarily, it's sleepy and choppy. Secondarily, it's un-inspiring; this secondary point is subjective, but I've purchased and listened to 100+ audiobooks, and this one is just not good, from a performative POV.

If they re-produce this with another voice actor, I'm sure it'll be fine. But I can't recommend this audiobook.

Narrator sounds like a robot.

Cadence slow and boring. No emotion. I honestly do not know if a human is reading it.

Answers to my questions about the bank crash

Clearly great reporting by Enrich and he has a compelling story. I bought this book after Rachel Maddow interviewed the Author and gave it glowing reviews. She's right it is a book to cover more than once. It documents the destruction of the lives of many people involved in the corporate greed of the banking industry. It also highlights the need for strong oversight of the financial organizations in the US and the need for a strong Justice Department for the USA to hold corporations like Deutsche Bank to account.
My one complaint is the reader is very slow-paced. I ended up setting my iPod to playback at 1.25 and found that made my experience better. My husband, on the other hand, liked the slower pace.

KNOW BEFORE VOTING!!

Essential information on who your president and his family really are!
Even if you already know.

How not to run a bank.

This book shows how greed, love of money, ego and lack of regulation can ruin a bank and the people associated with it. Deutsche Bank makes WF, bank in San Fran, look like a bunch of choirboys. It also shows how people at the top are more concerned with CYA than the truth, but the truth will come out.
This is not a book that is going to leave you with a good feeling.

A Perspective on the Derivative Market & Avarice

Dark Towers, Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction, written by David Enrich, and narrated by B. J. Harrison. Society operates by making fair laws and abiding those decrees. Where those laws operate to guarantee equal application of the rules to all and democratic meaning all individuals are respected and the process by which they are questioned is to seek the truth and not a third party’s individual objectives; abide and we will have a glorious society. Something like the United States and major European nations from the post-WWII until, well until recently. The evil amongst us will try to game the system of equality, liberty, and justice to set it down a misguided path to try to gain undue advantage, producing undue economic attraction to the diabolical scheme; advocating lies as being the truth. The result is a failed distribution of world wealth. That’s my present philosophy.

This is a book that tells us Deutsche Bank and Donald Trump do in fact take undue advantage, producing undue economic attraction to their diabolical schemes; by lying as to what is truth. They have no respect for equality, liberty, and justice; but care only about money in their hands. A good and valuable piece of knowledge; but to get there one must read through the dullest of stories. It’s not that the content of how the DB became such an evil place is uninteresting. It is. The tale as told herein was like a forty-mile hike through 7-inch-deep mud. The reader was perfectly matched. A slog of a read. Oh yes, there is little here about Trump and his minions. They are mentioned when they show up in the dirty business of DB. No understanding or revealing secrets.

Although the tale was not well told for those of us who understand and enjoy finance; this is a good read and a recommended source for things to come.

After listening, believe it would be worth reading

The inner workings of an institution like Deutsche Bank would be a tough story to tell - especially to those of us who cannot stand to balance our checkbooks. Enrich does a great job of telling a story of the greed that fuels financial traders and bankers. It's a game. And Trump is good at playing the game. All it takes is finding a willing patsy of a partner like Rosemary Vrablic and Deutsche Bank. There's more to this story other than Trump, of course, but Trump is a prime example of how twisted and crooked the financial system is right now. Not to mention enabling. When it comes tumbling down, which is inevitable, t's going to be extremely ugly.

I had to laugh at some reviewers comments that the narrator sounds like a robot. I was listening to this book using my iPhone while dusting the bedroom. My husband heard some of it and commented that the narrator sounded like HAL from "2001: A Space Odyssey". It didn't bother me. I thought B.J. Harrison's narration was even and calming.

Horrible narration - I couldn't finish it

I was really looking forward to this book, but the narration is just horrible. Very slow and stilted. I gave it a few hours, and even played it at 1.25x speed, but even then I couldn't get used to it. I hope the story is good because I might try it in book form, but the audio version is just horrible.

could be much, much shorter

Deutsche Bank financed Auschwitz and hasn't improved their morals since.

they launder money for the Russians

they were the last bank who would loan trump money and therefore trump is Putin's puppet

they were under investigation under Obama, now they're not.

there, I saved you 11 hours of your life.