Purchase
America's Dream Palace
Yale University Press
May 2008
On Sale: April 22, 2008
208 pages
ISBN: 0300117558
EAN: 9780300117554
Hardcover
Add to Wish List
Non-Fiction
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 Americaβs love- hate relationship with Wall Street. Steve Fraser frames his fascinating analysis around the roles of four iconic Wall Street typesβthe aristocrat, the confidence man, the hero, and the immoralistβall 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.
 Media BuzzFresh Air - NPR - October 1, 2008
| 
© 2003-2026