Greg Steinmetz with American Rascal: How Jay Gould Built Wall Street's Biggest Fortune

One of the Gilded Age’s most complex and quirky characters, Jay Gould was praised for his brilliance by John D. Rockefeller and Cornelius Vanderbilt, yet he was condemned by Mark Twain for forever destroying American business values. He lived a colorful life, trading jokes with Thomas Edison, paying Boss Tweed’s bail, and commuting to work in a 200-foot yacht. The son of a poor farmer whose early life was marked by tragedy, Gould saw money as the means to give his family a better life; and he thrived in an expanding, industrial economy in which authorities tolerated insider trading and stock price manipulation. In American Rascal we learn how he took these practices to new levels, pulling “a fast one” on nearly everyone. Join author Greg Steinmetz and moderator Esther Crain in exploring his remarkable life, Steinmetz’s “gripping biography” (Fortune), and the glittering Gilded Age era.