Wall Street : America's dream palace / Steve Fraser.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fraser, Steve, 1945-

Series:

Icons of America.

[Icons of America]

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Capitalists and financiers--United States--Biography.

Capitalists and financiers.

Wall Street (New York, N.Y.)--History.

Wall Street (New York, N.Y.).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (209 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, c2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Wall Street: no other place on earth is so singularly identified with money and the power of money. And no other American institution has inspired such deep moral, cultural, and political ambivalence. Is the Street an unbreachable bulwark defending commercial order? Or is it a center of mad ambition? This book recounts the colorful history of America's love-hate relationship with Wall Street. Steve Fraser frames his fascinating analysis around the roles of four iconic Wall Street types-the aristocrat, the confidence man, the hero, and the immoralist-all recurring figures who yield surprising insights about how the nation has wrestled, and still wrestles, with fundamental questions of wealth and work, democracy and elitism, greed and salvation. Spanning the years from the first Wall Street panic of 1792 to the dot.com bubble-and-bust and Enron scandals of our own time, the book is full of stories and portraits of such larger-than-life figures as J. P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Michael Milken. Fraser considers the conflicting attitudes of ordinary Americans toward the Street and concludes with a brief rumination on the recent notion of Wall Street as a haven for Everyman.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction

One. The Aristocrat

Two. The Confidence Man

Three. The Hero

Four. The Immoralist

Epilogue

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

Notes:

Series from jacket.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 181-192) and index.

ISBN:

9786612352171

9786612088629

9781282352179

1282352172

9780300145083

030014508X

9781282088627

1282088629

OCLC:

379425399