BookShared
  • MEMBER AREA    
  • American Rascal: How Jay Gould Built Wall Street's Biggest Fortune

    (By Greg Steinmetz)

    Book Cover Watermark PDF Icon Read Ebook
    ×
    Size 21 MB (21,080 KB)
    Format PDF
    Downloaded 584 times
    Last checked 8 Hour ago!
    Author Greg Steinmetz
    “Book Descriptions: The gripping biography of Jay Gould, the greatest 19th-century robber barons, whose brilliance, greed, and bare-knuckled tactics made him richer than Rockefeller and led Wall Street to institute its first financial reforms.

    Had Jay Gould put his name on a university or concert hall, he would undoubtedly have been a household name today. The son of a poor farmer whose early life was marked by tragedy, Gould saw money as the means to give his family a better life…even if, to do so, he had to pull a fast one on everyone else. After entering Wall Street at the age of twenty-four, he quickly became notorious when he paralyzed the economy and nearly toppled President Ulysses S. Grant in the Black Friday market collapse of 1869 in an attempt to corner the market on gold—an event that remains among the darkest days in Wall Street history. Through clever financial maneuvers, he gained control over one of every six miles of the country’s rapidly expanding network for railroad tracks—coming close to creating the first truly transcontinental railroad and making himself one of the richest men in America.

    American Rascal shows Gould’s complex, quirky character. He was at once praised for his brilliance by Rockefeller and Vanderbilt and condemned for forever destroying American business values by Mark Twain. He lived a colorful life, trading jokes with Thomas Edison, figuring Thomas Nast’s best sketches, paying Boss Tweed’s bail, and commuting to work in a 200-foot yacht.

    Gould thrived in an expanding, industrial economy in which authorities tolerated inside trading and stock price manipulation because they believed regulation would stifle progress. But by taking these practices to new levels, Gould showed how unbridled capitalism was, in fact, dangerous for the American economy. This eye-opening history explores Gould’s audacious exploitation of economic freedom triggered the first public demands for financial reform—a call that still resonates today.”

    Google Drive Logo DRIVE
    Book 1

    A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland

    ★★★★★

    Troy Senik

    Book 1

    The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, and the Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend

    ★★★★★

    Rob Copeland

    Book 1

    How to Invest: Masters on the Craft

    ★★★★★

    David M. Rubenstein

    Book 1

    The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

    ★★★★★

    Erik Larson

    Book 1

    President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier

    ★★★★★

    C.W. Goodyear

    Book 1

    King of Capital: The Remarkable Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Steve Schwarzman and Blackstone

    ★★★★★

    David Carey

    Book 1

    Chaos Kings: How Wall Street Traders Make Billions in the New Age of Crisis

    ★★★★★

    Scott Patterson

    Book 1

    The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams

    ★★★★★

    Stacy Schiff

    Book 1

    Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon

    ★★★★★

    William D. Cohan

    Book 1

    Fat Leonard: How One Man Bribed, Bilked, and Seduced the U.S. Navy

    ★★★★★

    Craig Whitlock

    Book 1

    American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis

    ★★★★★

    Adam Hochschild

    Book 1

    For Profit: A History of Corporations

    ★★★★★

    William Magnuson

    Book 1

    The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook

    ★★★★★

    Hampton Sides

    Book 1

    The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation

    ★★★★★

    Brenda Wineapple