After establishing the inefficiencies of the current suite of public and private retirement solutions and hinting at the superiority of the tontine structure, McClelland and Wiethe dive deeper into the history of tontines. Going all the way back to the king of France in the 17th century and his use of tontines to fund wars with England to their role in funding the precursor to the New York Stock Exchange. They also examine the eventual rise of tontines to the most popular and lucrative insurance product in America in the nineteenth century, to their rapid and misunderstood demise following the Armstrong Commission in 1906.