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

by John Steele Gordon

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684832879
• ISBN13: 9780684832876
• Release Date: November 1999
• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.32 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Wall Street: Good and Bad, Start to Finish

Very few books manage to write a 300 year history of anything and stay lively and thought provoking from start to finish. Mr. Gordon's "The Great Game" does so in convincing fashion. The book maintains a quick pace, touching on all of the major events, firms and people that have led to Wall Street's emergence as financier for the world. Yet despite its quick pace the treatment of each of these characters and defining moments is surprisingly deep. I was surprised by the accolades that Mr. Gordon gave to Alexander Hamilton, and how much he had to do with helping establish the US, and correspondingly Wall Street, as a financial powerhouse. (So impressed I read one of his biographies by McDonald.) The theme of the book is the increasing potency of this small street, how it goes from being the financial focus of New York City to New York State, to the Northeast, to the US and finally to the entire world. Wall Street no long represents a few hundred feet of not even water front property, it has come to represent the very essence of finance, not just in the US, but throughout the world. Mr. Gordon has done an excellent job of walking the reader through this fascinating story.I highly recommend this book.

It's a great investment.....

Even though I have another book on the history of Wall Street in my reading stack, I picked up a copy of the book just because John Steele Gordon wrote it. Many of you will recognize his voice on NPR and in American Heritage. In fact, Mr. Gordon's article is the first section I read when I receive the newest copy of American Heritage. Mr. Gordon always spins a surprising story each month and this book is no different. Mr. Gordon covers 350 years of history in just 300 pages, however, don't let the title fool you, it really only covers Wall Street until about 1995, not 2000 (a minor quibble). The book contains many interesting stories along the way such as how Chase Manhattan started off as a water company and why Merrill Lynch was named after two brokers, not one (I didn't realize that). As always no book on the history of Wall Street would be complete without the Erie Railroad, the "Scarlet Women of Wall Street." Mr. Gordon relives the Erie tale with relish! I could almost see Daniel Drew laughing as he printed additional shares of Erie stock as fast as Commodore Vanderbilt could buy them. The rest of the players of Wall Street take their turn in the book, including J.P. Morgan, Fisk and Gould, Joe Kennedy, Alexander Hamilton, and a few women such as Hetty Green also appear. Gordon takes time to explain many concepts about how the stock market came to be today including stories on the first corner in Wall Street history to the most recent, the Hunt's brothers attempt to corner the silver market in 1980. Mr. Gordon also explains that each time a player uses the market to their advantage, the invisible hand of Adam Smith pushes the market to correct the "wrongs."Though it is not one of Mr. Gordon's main points in the book, he does point out throughout the book that the "Robber Barons" of old had many friends/allies in government that turned a blind eye to their schemes. This book is filled with the history of people of Wall Street, not numbers! Pick it up, you'll find that Mr. Gordon's cornered the market on the history of Wall Street!

Don't let the title throw you - it's an exciting read

The Great Game is a gem of a book that will appeal to a wide spectrum of people regardless of their personal interest in matters financial. Full of colorful characters and incredible schemes, the central thesis of this terrifically readable treatise is the notion that, in a very real sense, Wall Street sits at the very center of world power, almost as a sovereign entity. The scope of its influence is breathtaking, and Gordon paints a meticulously researched and exciting picture of how it came to be that way. There are some surprises, too. The author easily dispenses with the traditional view that the crash of 1929 was the proximate cause of the Great Depression, and demonstrates how advances in communication technology can often be traced back to the need for investors to have better access to information. An eminently readable must.

Once merely a wall....

I really enjoyed reading this book. It traces the emergence of Wall Street as a world power from 1653 until 2000. In Chapter One, Gordon takes us back in time to the colony of Nieuw Amsterdam. Because its governor, Peter Stuyvesant, feared a land attack from New England, he convinced local merchants to finance the construction of a wall on the town's northern edge. After its construction (of sixteen-foot logs sunk four feet into the ground and sharpened at the top), the city council initially refused to repay the merchants. Only later when Stuyvesant agreed to turn over revenues from the tax on liquor in compensation did the council reluctantly agree. Thus did the town gain a new wall...and a new street as well. This situation is representative of Gordon's approach to more than 300 years of history. He anchors his reader in a series of historical situations which can often seem dry as dust. Presented by Gordon, they almost come to life. Consider this brief excerpt: [My book] runs from an economy powered by peasants at their plows to one powered by office workers at their computers; from Galileo's handmade two-inch telescope that could not clearly make out the rings of Saturn, to the Keck Observatory's paired-ten- meter instruments that can see twelve billion light years into space; from a world where news moved at the speed of a horse to one where it moves at the speed of light;. Thus this book is history on the grand scale. And history on such a scale of necessity, largely the history of great men, great themes, and great powers.As Gordon also notes in the Prologue, like ancient Rome, "Wall Street started small and inconsequential, utterly unnoticed by the mighty of the earth....And like the story of Rome, Wall Street's story is a story worth telling. For like the Romans, the players of the great game were (and are) great, petty, loathsome, smart, brainless, selfish, generous, and always, always human." There are 15 lively chapters and then an Epilogue in which Gordon describes playing "the great game" as "pursuing our infinite self-interests within the rules of the game." By doing so, "we will continue to move the invisible hand that has made so much of the world so rich." Frankly, I was at first reluctant to read this book. However, I immediately became fascinated by what Gordon shares in the Prologue and then totally caught up in the narrative which follows. Having read it, I understood what Edwin Lefevre (whom Gordon quotes) meant when he once said of that financial center: "The game does not change and neither does human nature."

Every Page Enhances Your Knowledge

Mr. Gorden has accomplished what only great communicators can; he delivers a tremendous amount of easily understood information about his subject, and does not require 1000 pages to do so. In this instance the subject is not an easy one to grasp if it is new to you, or even if it's not so new. If you have ever wanted to have an understanding of much of what you hear about Wall Street, including historical fact, definitions of market language, where the word broker originated, or where and why the wall that was actually erected was placed that gave Wall Street it's name, this is the book. Mr. Gorden explains why geography destined New York City to outgrow any other American Port, and the reasons may surprise you. What was the first "Corner" that was accomplished in the market, what is a "Corner", it's all here. As are some of the famous and infamous men and some fascinating women that helped create the colorful history of, and that brought us the amazing place Wall Street is today. And Mr. Gordon's explanation as to the definition of what constitutes a World Power might surprise you, as well as who those powers are. Very well written, full of useful information, all in all, a great read.