The Great Game: The Emergence of Wall Street as a World Power: 1653-2000

For more than two hundred years, fortunes have been made -- and lost -- on Wall Street by men and women playing the great game of capitalism. Many have repeated the mistakes of their forebears, and some have enjoyed similar triumphs. In this gripping and informative book, John Steele Gordon tells history lovers, armchair investors, financiers, and day traders alike everything they need to know about Wall Street's wild ride to power.

Wall Street began as the northern line of defense for a wilderness trading post, at a time when money was limited to gold, silver, and Indian wampum. Today, Wall Street is a metaphor for the global financial market, and money exists mostly on computer screens. More than three million Americans are now employed by the securities industry, and Wall Street wields the sort of power once reserved to nation states. How did an unimpressive little byway become so formidable? In this richly textured narrative history, John Steele Gordon brings to life the remarkable cast of bankers and brokers, visionaries and crooks who made it happen.

Nature gave New York one of the world's great harbors, and the Dutch founders gave the city its enduring love of making money. In pursuit of that love, New Yorkers began meeting under the trees and lampposts of Wall Street to buy and sell securities. As the country expanded westward, canal and railroad companies came to Wall Street looking for capital. Later still, manufacturers came as well, and, by the beginning of the twentieth century, the United States had the mightiest national economy in the world. No small part of that development was due to Wall Street, which, time and again, has demonstrated how Adam Smith's invisible hand turns the pursuit of economic self-interest into common wealth.

Gordon tells the fascinating stories of the key players of the Great Game, including Jacob Little, the first great Wall Street plunger; Commodore Vanderbilt, the Street's greatest tactician; Hetty Green, the "richest woman in the world," who was terrified of being poor; J. P. Morgan, the country's most important banker, who twice saved it from economic disaster when the government couldn't; Richard Whitney, the president of the New York Stock Exchange, who was a thief; and Charles E. Merrill, who brought Wall Street to Main Street and transformed both in the process. From Alexander Hamilton to Michael Milken, the history of Wall Street is a history of risk, courage, avarice, patriotism, power, genius, and even, occasionally, remarkable stupidity.

Wall Street has finally found a biographer worthy of her extraordinary story in acclaimed business historian John Steele Gordon. As more and more Americans invest their money in the stock market, The Great Game is a lively and absorbing account of how Wall Street became a crucial part of all our lives.

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

A fun and lively story of Wall Street, 2006-03-12
I read this book before I went to my MBA program. This was a fun introduction to history of Wall Street. It helped me put the financial world into perspective--and it helped me appreciate the power and influence Wall Street has had on our country.


0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Very Good Historical Read of Wall Street!!!, 2005-10-25
Very interesting. Financial schemes have plagued Wall St and the markets since their inception and not much has changed with the recent Refco, Enron, Tyco, World Com, LTCM scandals and the list goes on. The risk of playing the great game reaches beyond the instrument in which one invests but includes brokers, brokerage houses, banks & politicians. The history of Wall St finds itself another contributor to the old adage "The more things change, the more they remain the same."


0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

history of the beaten heart of the Western countries, 2005-08-20
It provides a good view of the Wall Street which is the beaten heart of the Western countries. As a Chinese who invested some of my money into our developing finance market, I learned many lessons from it and got more confidence of my own country's baby-market. Good Work!


0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

The emergence of the Great Power of Wall Street,, 2004-10-25
This is a great and interesting book about the rise of Wall Street. Gordon summarizes the great amount of information into an a very readable 250 pages. Gordon also gives some short biographies of some of the very interesting characters of Wall Street such as Alexander Hamilton, Commodore Vanderbilt, J. P. Morgan, Hetty Green, and Dick Whitney. This history tells the rise of stock trading on Wall Street to the present period. It is interesting to see why initially the Dutch and the geographical position of New York assured Wall Street of becoming a world financial power of the first degree. This book details why the initial advantages plus the innovation of the financial leaders gave Wall Street the premier financial position in the world.
This book is well written with short biographies and historical summaries of the rise of Wall Street. This is a good initial read since it will show the reader why the NYSE and Wall Street become the financial leaders they are today.


0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Breezy History of New York as a Business Empire, 2004-10-01
The Great Game is a wonderful narrative history of Wall Street and New York as a financial center, the supercharged engine of world capitalism. John Steele Gordon is a gifted writer whose byline appears frequently in the pages of American Heritage. In this work he focuses on the men and events that made Wall Street the center of the financial world. Beginning with Dutch Manhattan, the city of the Knickerbockers, Gordon explains how Wall Street got its name, the vital importance of Dutch mercantilism and their invention of the modern banking system, the stock exchange, business insurance and the corporation - all of which were adopted by the British who transformed New Amsterdam into New York. The book introduces the origins of the securities business in the Buttonwood Agreement, the vital role of Alexander Hamilton, the consummate New Yorker, who set the new American nation on firm financial footing, the role of New York's great harbor, then the construction of the Erie Canal, which opened the west to development and transformed New York into the financial capital of America. Gordon introduces the colorful figures that have been players in the "Great Game" of the financial markets, from Jacob Little and other early promoters, the "Commodore" Vanderbilt, the mid-19th century colossus, to Hetty Green, millionaire and the "meanest woman in the world" to J.P. Morgan whose financial savvy saved Wall Street from crisis more than once. He writes of the important 20th century figures like Charles Merrill, the man who democratized stock investing and brought it to Middle America and finally Michael Miliken, developer of the "junk bond" as a financial instrument during the go-go 1990's. John Steele Gordon's "Great Game" is a lively and compelling account of the most important little street in the world by a writer who knows his material well and clearly enjoys sharing it.

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