Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street 1920-1938 - Hardcover

Brooks, John

3.98

319 ratings by Goodreads

9781880559857: Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street 1920-1938

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1880559854 ISBN 13: 9781880559857

Publisher: Allworth Pr, 1998

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This classic of the bullish 1920s on Wall Street, the 1929 crash and its aftershocks, and the fall of the impeccable president of the New York Stock Exchange, Richard Whitney, offers an education for the contemporary investor. From the corrupt dealings that led to the securities laws governing the modern markets to the one-sided psychology of the bullish investor, John Brooks explores timeless themes as true today as when Once in Golconda was originally published a generation ago. Once in Golconda is the story of winners and losers. It begins with the famous, still unsolved, 1920 bomb explosion outside the Morgan bank and ends with a metaphoric explosion in the fall of Richard Whitney. The book gives a ringside seat for a succession of dramatic performances and actors: the "corner" in Stutz stock, engineered by Allan Ryan, dissident son of Thomas Fortune Ryan; the House of Morgan and, just across the street, Kuhn, Loeb & Company; the Irish (Joseph P. Kennedy, master manipulator of "pools"; Michael J. Meehan; Sell 'em Ben Smith); vignettes of the crash; and FDR's advisors playing with the price of gold.

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From the Back Cover:

Once in Golconda "In this book, John Brooks–who was one of the most elegant of all business writers–perfectly catches the flavor of one of history′s best–known financial dramas: the 1929 crash and its aftershocks. It′s packed with parallels and parables for the modern reader." –From the Foreword by Richard Lambert Editor–in–Chief, The Financial Times Once in Golconda is a dramatic chronicle of the breathtaking rise, devastating fall, and painstaking rebirth of Wall Street in the years between the wars. Focusing on the lives and fortunes of some of the era′s most memorable traders, bankers, boosters, and frauds, John Brooks brings to vivid life all the ruthlessness, greed, and reckless euphoria of the ′20s bull market, the desperation of the days leading up to the crash of ′29, and the bitterness of the years that followed. Praise for Once in Golconda "A fast–moving, sophisticated account.embracing the stock–market boom of the twenties, the crash of 1929, the Depression, and the coming of the New Deal. Its leitmotif is the truly tragic personal history of Richard Whitney, the aristocrat Morgan broker and head of the Stock Exchange, who ended up in Sing Sing." –Edmund Wilson, writing in the New Yorker "As Mr. Brooks tells this tale of dishonor, desperation, and the fall of the mighty, it takes on overtones of Greek tragedy, a king brought down by pride. Whitney′s sordid history has been told before..But in Mr. Brooks′s hands, the drama becomes freshly shocking." –Wall Street Journal "It′s all there in Once in Golconda–the avarice of an era that favored the rich; and the later anguish of myriads of speculators doomed by a bloated market, easy credit, and their own cupidity and stupidity." –Saturday Review

About the Author:

JOHN BROOKS was an award–winning New Yorker staff writer and author of several critically acclaimed explorations of business and Wall Street. Besides Once in Golconda, these include The Go–Go Years (Wiley), The Games Players, Business Adventures, and The Fate of the Edsel.

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