Victor Niederhoffer, eine exzentrische, außergewöhnliche Persönlichkeit und ein äußerst erfolgreicher Börsenhändler, erzählt seine wirklich faszinierende Geschichte: Sein Leben, seine Ausbildung, seine Erfolge und Fehler, Gewinne und Verluste. In einem Geschäft, in dem es von Scharlatanen wimmelt, erfrischen derart realistische Worte. Mit vielen Hintergrundinformationen am Rande, beispielsweise über die Hillary-Clinton-Affäre. (06/98)

“Written with verve and passion. . . . offers a remarkable array of insights into the history of American capitalism.” — Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History, Columbia University “Big, boisterous, biting, and brilliant. . . . both page-turner and scholarly tour de force.” — Walter A. McDougall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Freedom Just Around the Corner “Remarkable. . . . Fraser tells the tale in high style.” — Sean Wilentz, Dayton-Stockton Professor of History, Princeton University “Should be widely read by scholars, students, and anyone interested in America’s ambivalent relationship with big business and big finance.” — David Nasaw, author of The Chief “Comprehensive, considered, and literate: a real accomplishment.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Fraser gives a thorough analysis of this scandal-ridden menagerie as reflected in books, movies, and the political arena.” — Booklist (starred review)

A lively, original, and challenging history of stock market speculation from the 17th century to present day. Is your investment in that new Internet stock a sign of stock market savvy or an act of peculiarly American speculative folly? How has the psychology of investing changed—and not changed—over the last five hundred years? In Devil Take the Hindmost, Edward Chancellor traces the origins of the speculative spirit back to ancient Rome and chronicles its revival in the modern world: from the tulip scandal of 1630s Holland, to “stockjobbing” in London's Exchange Alley, to the infamous South Sea Bubble of 1720, which prompted Sir Isaac Newton to comment, “I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.” Here are brokers underwriting risks that included highway robbery and the “assurance of female chastity”; credit notes and lottery tickets circulating as money; wise and unwise investors from Alexander Pope and Benjamin Disraeli to Ivan Boesky and Hillary Rodham Clinton. From the Gilded Age to the Roaring Twenties, from the nineteenth century railway mania to the crash of 1929, from junk bonds and the Japanese bubble economy to the day-traders of the Information Era, Devil Take the Hindmost tells a fascinating story of human dreams and folly through the ages.