Wall Street is the stuff of legend and a source of nightmares, a force so powerful in American societyDSand, indeed, in world economics and cultureDSthat it has become an almost universal symbol of both the highest aspirations of commercial success and the basest impulses of greed and deception. How did such a small, concentrated pocket of lower Manhattan come to have such an enormous influence in national and world affairs? In this wide-ranging volume, economic historian Charles Geisst answers this question as he provides the first history of Wall Street, ranging over two centuries from the loose association of traders meeting on New York sidewalks and coffee houses in the late 18th century, to the modern billion-dollar computer-driven colossus of today. Taking in the Gold Rush, the economic boom (for the North) of the Civil War, the great stock market crash of 1929, and the junk bond frenzy and the merger mania of the 1980s, this is a tale of profits and losses, endlessly enterprising spirits, and the role Wall Street played in helping America become the most powerful economy in the world.
