The Man Who Made Wall Street: Anthony J. Drexel and the Rise of Modern Finance

by Dan Rottenberg

Book Overview

He tamed the market's bulls and bears. "He was the best friend I have ever had in every way."--J. P. Morgan

It was the height of the Gilded Age and J. Pierpont Morgan controlled the fate of railroads, corporations, and governments. The wealthy and influential were said to tremble before his blinding intellect and intimidating gaze, yet he deferred to one man: Anthony J. Drexel. Drexel--whose name is familiar today only through the university...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 081221966X
• ISBN13: 9780812219661
• Release Date: May 2006
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 1.06 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.9" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Terrific

I read this book several years ago and just recently started reading it again (in light of recent Wall Street scandals and bailouts). We could use Anthony Drexel today.

Captivating

I could not put it down. A fascinating informative tale or an amazing man.

The Man Who Made Wall Street

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Dan Rottenberg's informative book The Man Who Made Wall Street. The book contains all there is to know about the wise and amazingly successful nineteenth century financier Anthony Drexel and the profound role he played as a mentor to the young J. Pierpont Morgan. I especially enjoyed reading about financial systems and processes in nineteenth century America that author Rottenberg describes so well in his new book.

The Man Who Made J.P. Morgan

A gripping good story about one of the titans of American history, who did his best to hide out. Author Rottenberg writes a grand supplement to things that one thinks that one knows, putting a whole new perspective on the history of corporate finance. This subject is anything but dull in the hands of an author who so skillfully depicts its high drama of riches and ruin. J.P. Morgan was a made man, not a self-made man, for his more famous role in a time closer to our own, and Drexel is the mentor who made him. Ron Chernow, the great Morgan and Rockefeller author, flew blind on this part of the story, for Rottenberg's material had to be dredged up over a 20-year period from remote sources, given Drexel's own destruction of records and correspondence. Required reading for anyone with an interest in the source of the general wealth that makes this country's political and economic freedoms possible.

An Outstanding History

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I became very interested in Rottenberg's engrossing account of the American economy in the decades before and just after the Civil War. I didn't pick up the book for that reason, but as I read along, I became more and more fascinated by how financial transactions were made and the meteoric rise of America as a global financial center. The main focus of the book, the reconstructed life of a private person who was a major influence on many key public figures, including J.P. Morgan (whom Drexel nurtured), his niece, the recently canonized Mother Katherine Drexel, and the Bouvier family of Jackie Kennedy fame, among many others, is well told, surprising, and great reading.