In this wide-ranging volume, Charles Geisst provides the first history of Wall Street, explaining how a small corner of lower Manhattan came to have such enormous influence in national and world affairs. In this updated edition, Geisst sums up the recent turbulence that has threatened America's financial industry, including the speculative fever that swept Wall Street in the 1990's and the scandals at Enron, Tyco, Worldcom, and Conseco. Wall Street is at once the story of the street itself, from the days when the wall was merely a defensive barricade built by Peter Stuyvesant, to the modern billion-dollar computer-driven colossus of today.
