The Devil Genius of Wall Street: The Jay Gould Biography

Author: Edward J. Renehan Jr. (USA)
Publisher:
Publishing Date: Not available
Features:
He was the king of the money grabbers among the money grabbers;
He was as famous as J.P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt;
His status in that era surpassed that of Bill Gates in our time;
He was both the greatest financial and business genius of his time and a demon who provoked widespread hatred;
Although Gould committed every crime that the financiers of his generation had committed, he actually caused no greater harm to society than the financiers or industrialists who lost to him—in the past few centuries, those financiers or industrialists had enjoyed a higher reputation than Gould. After losing to Gould, his business rivals provided the media with various distorted materials to portray Gould as the demon of Wall Street.
I hope everyone sees a true, uned Gould, whether as a financier or as a man. In narrating Gould's business career, I did not intend to be his prosecutor or defense attorney; I only wanted to present the facts to everyone. As for Gould's private life, I mainly wanted to fill the huge gaps left by previous legendary writers. In short, I will strive to portray the complex (and sometimes even contradictory) Gould in a true, objective, and complete manner in time; a mysterious Wall Street bandit, a calm corporate manager, and the emperor of an era. – Excerpted from the Preface
Jay Gould, the founder of modern business, the undisputed giant of 19th-century American railroads and telegraph systems, and the manipulator of the stock market in the "Gilded Age." His attack on the gold market in 1869 triggered the Great Panic known as "Black Friday." The new methods he created for manipulating markets, raising capital, and acquiring competitors have become many of the standard operating models in today's financial markets.
While accumulating extraordinary wealth and achievements, Gould also bore a greater reputation for ill fame than his peers or rivals. At the time, the media relentlessly attacked him. When discussing modern American financial history, Gould was always considered the number one demon. He was cruelly and wrongly distorted by the media throughout his life and was never vindicated even after his death.
But in this book, you will see a successful, detail-oriented entrepreneur, a workaholic who fiercely integrated the dying railroad industry and transformed it into a highly profitable network, and a true, uned CEO.
This is a biography that offers an objective and fair evaluation of Gould. It skillfully and vividly combines the true and peculiar life of Gould with the rich social background of the Gilded Age, portraying the dazzling life of this misunderstood, important, and complex 19th-century through a fresh and comprehensive narrative.