A gripping, “rollicking” (John Carreyrou, New York Times bestselling author of Bad Blood) biography of Jay Gould, the greatest of the 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 the progress. But by taking these practices to new levels, Gould showed how unbridled capitalism was, in fact, dangerous for the American economy. This “gripping biography” (Fortune) explores how Gould’s audacious exploitation of economic freedom triggered the first public demands for financial reforms—a call that still resonates today.
ISBN-13: 9781982107413
Media Type: Paperback
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: 08-22-2023
Pages: 320
Product Dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.38(h) x 0.80(d)
Greg Steinmetz is a partner at a money management firm in New York. He previously worked for The Wall Street Journal, where he covered investment banking before becoming Berlin Bureau Chief and then London Bureau Chief. His first book, The Richest Man Who Ever Lived: The Life and Times of Jacob Fugger, was heralded by Andrew Ross Sorkin as one of the best reads of 2015.
Table of Contents
Introduction xi
Part 1
1 School Days 3
2 The Seduction of Zadock Pratt 11
3 Tanners War 23
4 This Thing Ambition 27
5 Influencers 35
6 Erie 43
7 Sardines 51
8 The Flight 57
9 Peculiar Affairs 65
10 Good Morning, Commodore 77
11 Prophet of Regulation 81
12 Gold 89
13 The Plot 99
14 The Mix-up 107
15 Pump and Dump 113
16 Black Friday 119
17 The Day After 125
18 The Reckoning 131
Part 2
19 Fisk's Reward 139
20 Cows in the Moonlight 147
21 Union Pacific 155
22 Edison 165
23 Dirty Tricks 173
24 In Gould's Grip 177
25 Acquisitions 183
26 Western Union 187
27 Elevated 191
28 Wares at a Bazaar 197
29 Terror 207
30 The Strike 215
31 A Gould Wedding 225
32 In the Dock 229
33 Bad News 233
34 Morgan 239
35 Change at the Top 245
36 Woodlawn 253
37 An Appraisal 259
Epilogue 267
Acknowledgments and Sourcing 271
Notes 273
Index 287
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