"The chief business of the American people is business," President Calvin Coolidge once said. The nation's founding landowners, merchants and tycoons have been, for better and worse, as totemic figures as any in making the United States the country it is today. However, although most Americans could likely recite the names Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie, J.P. Morgan and Vanderbilt, these men comprise only a small fraction of the major businesspeople in U.S. history. In American Rascal, Greg Steinmetz--author, former Wall Street Journal reporter and securities analyst--tells the story of the life of Jay Gould. A lesser-known robber baron of the Gilded Age, Gould was just as wealthy as his contemporaries. His actions enormously influenced the U.S. in the second half of the 19th century and beyond.
Gould, determined from a young age to seize his share of the nation's exploding wealth, worked with a maniacal energy. Parlaying early success in tanneries into railroad investing and broader stock speculation, he gained enormous stakes in the massive logistics network, uniting a huge country, and engaged in many large-scale stock trading tactics that are now illegal--largely, Steinmetz argues, because of Gould.
Steinmetz (The Richest Man who Ever Lived) writes in short chapters and with focused and clear prose, weaving in vital historical context. The result is like a chronological collection of news articles about particular episodes of Gould's life. It's an accessible and informative biography that communicates a clear message and major ramifications for today's different, but in some ways similar, rough-and-tumble business world. --Walker Minot, freelance writer and editor