Drawing on diaries, private letters, memoirs, and reportage, David Colbert's acclaimed Eyewitness books offer extraordinary first-hand views of history's pivotal moments. Eyewitness to Wall Street's combination of remarkable perspectives and a subject of exceptional current interest results in the richest and most illuminating Eyewitness book yet.From our first IPO -- the European fund-raising that launched America's colonization -- through today's mass obsession with the Dow and Nasdaq, Eyewitness to Wall Street brims with accounts from people who saw it happen -- poets and speculators, patriots and criminals, politicians and reporters -- including Daniel Defoe, Mark Twain, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Warren Buffet, and Michael Lewis. It reveals how Wall Street traders saved the Continental Army from bankruptcy and helped finance the Union during the Civil War; how Americans were suckered by the bull market of early 1929 and struggled through the rebuilding of modern Wall Street. More than halfthe book is devoted to the contemporary era, defined by the "greed is good" 1980s, the bull market 1990s, and the dot-com millionaires and infla

Brings the 400-year history of the world's most famous street to life in the words of the people whose lives were deeply entwined in Wall Street's (WS) performance. Illuminates how the getting and spending of WS are inextricably linked with America's national character. From our first IPO -- the European fundraising that launched America's colonization -- through today's mass obsession with the Dow and Nasdaq, the book brims with accounts from people who saw it happen -- poets and speculators, patriots and criminals, politicians and reporters. Their accounts reveal the myriad ways that WS has served not only as the epicenter of Amer. finance but as a major factor in the larger events of Amer. history. Half of the book is devoted to the period 1980-2000.

A noted business reporter from CNBC draws on her network of high-level sources to give her unique perspective on the three day period in September 2008 when Lehman Brothers failed, Merrill Lynch barely survived, and AIG became a ward of the government.

In Take on the Street, Arthur Levitt--Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission for eight years under President Clinton--provides the best kind of insider information: the kind that can help honest, small investors protect themselves from the deliberately confusing ways of Wall Street. At a time when investor confidence in Wall Street and corporate America is at an historic low, when many are seriously questioning whether or not they should continue to invest, Levitt offers the benefits of his own experience, both on Wall Street and as its chief regulator. His straight talk about the ways of stockbrokers (they are salesmen, plain and simple), corporate financial statements (the truth is often hidden), mutual fund managers (remember who they really work for), and other aspects of the business will help to arm everyone with the tools they need to protect—and enhance—their financial future.

America's most famous business reporter gives her unique perspective on the white-knuckle weekend that brought the financial world to its knees. During a single historic weekend (September 12-14, 2008) the fate of Lehman Brothers was sealed, Merrill Lynch barely survived, and AIG became a ward of the federal government. Top CNBC anchor Maria Bartiromo spent the entire weekend taking frantic phone calls from the most powerful players on Wall Street and in Washington, as they toiled to keep the economy from complete collapse. Those CEOs and dozens of other sources gave Bartiromo behind-the-scenes details unavailable to other members of the media, of the crisis and its aftermath. Now she draws on her high-level network to provide an eyewitness account of the biggest events of the financial crisis including at length interviews with former treasury secretary Henry Paulson, former AIG chairman Hank Greenberg, former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain, and JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, among many others. Writing with both authority and dramatic flair, Bartiromo weaves a thrilling narrative that will make news. She also tackles the big questions: how did an unmatched period of market euphoria and growth turn sour, catapulting the economy into a dangerous slide? And in the long run, how will the near-catastrophe really change Wall Street?

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 Americas love-hate relationship with Wall Street. Steve Fraser frames his fascinating analysis around the roles of four iconic Wall Street typesthe aristocrat, the confidence man, the hero, and the immoralistall 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.

“My father’s life represented many layers of the human experience—freedman and Native American, farmer and rancher, rural educator and urban professional.”—John Hope Franklin Buck Colbert Franklin (1879–1960) led an extraordinary life; from his youth in what was then the Indian Territory to his practice of law in twentieth-century Tulsa, he was an observant witness to the changes in politics, law, daily existence, and race relations that transformed the wide-open Southwest. Fascinating in its depiction of an intelligent young man's coming of age in the days of the Land Rush and the closing of the frontier, My Life and an Era is equally important for its reporting of the triracial culture of early Oklahoma. Recalling his boyhood spent in the Chickasaw Nation, Franklin suggests that blacks fared better in Oklahoma in the days of the Indians than they did later with the white population. In addition to his insights about the social milieu, he offers youthful reminiscences of mustangs and mountain lions, of farming and ranch life, that might appear in a Western novel. After returning from college in Nashville and Atlanta, Franklin married a college classmate, studied law by mail, passed the bar, and struggled to build a practice in Springer and Ardmore in the first years of Oklahoma statehood. Eventually a successful attorney in Tulsa, he was an eyewitness to a number of important events in the Southwest, including the Tulsa race riot of 1921, which left more than 100 dead. His account clearly shows the growing racial tensions as more and more people moved into the state in the period leading up to World War II. Rounded out by an older man’s reflections on race, religion, culture, and law, My Life and an Era presents a true, firsthand account of a unique yet defining place and time in the nation's history, as told by an eloquent and impassioned writer.