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Americans have enjoyed a love-hate relationship with Wall Street for more than two hundred years. Long an object of suspicion and even fear, the stock market eventually came to be seen as an easy path to wealth. Steve Fraser examines the history of this powerful force that has had so much impact on the economy, politics and culture of the United States. The ethos of Wall Street contradicts that of American society in several ways: in a culture dedicated to hard work, it offers the possibility of instant, easy wealth, and the social hierarchy it supports clashes with the egalitarianism of a democratic society. Nevertheless, stocks and bonds have increasingly become accepted as a logical investment option. Breathtaking in its scope, Every Man a Speculator is nothing less than a history of capitalism in America. Steve Fraser is the author of Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor, a winner of the Phillip Taft Prize for the best book in labor history, as well as the co-editor of The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Nation, The American Prospect, Raritan, and Dissent. He received his Ph.D. in American History from Rutgers University. He lives in New York. ''An illuminating tour of how the United States has perceived its financial center over two centuries ... Fraser''s prose is elegant, and his eye for historical detail is keen, carrying the reader through the many sagas that he entertainingly recounts.'' - Washington Post
About the author
Steve Fraser is the author of Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor, which won the Philip Taft Prize for the best book in labor history. He is also the co-editor of The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order. He received his Ph.D. in American history from Rutgers University, and his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, the American Prospect, Raritan, and Dissent. He lives in New York City.
