The Gilded Age of Wall Street: Conspiracies and Corners, Greenbacks and Gold, War and Peace, Bubbles and Bear Raids, Riches and Ruin, Margin Calls and Crashes, the Great Panic, and the Great Depression Wall Street ran red with the blood of suicides and murder as the Lions of the Gilded Age made and lost epic fortunes. Step into the thrilling world of stock operator William Worthington Fowler, who witnessed firsthand the most turbulent decades in American financial history: 1860-1880. This era spanned the Civil War, the postwar bubble, the collapse into worthless paper money, the Black Friday Gold Panic of 1869, the Great Panic of 1873, and the catastrophic seven-year Great Depression that followed. Inside the Greatest Market Battles of the Gilded Age: Fowler exposes the legendary corners, trading rings, conspiracies, bear raids, manipulations, and frauds that defined the era. Watch fortunes rise and fall on margin, carry, and derivatives—puts, calls, and futures—as titans risked everything speculating in equities, gold, silver, cotton, oil, and more. Meet the Legendary Financiers: Fowler knew them all personally: Addison G. Cammack, Salmon P. Chase, Daniel Drew, James "Diamond Jim" Fisk Jr., Jay Gould, David Groesbeck, Leonard W. Jerome, Addison G. Jerome, Henry Keep, Jacob Little, Cornelius Vanderbilt, William Henry Vanderbilt, and more. A Revolutionary Financial Transformation: Witness the moment U.S. government paper money replaced gold and silver specie—and the bubbles, panics, and crashes that inevitably followed. History Repeating: Then and Now In her foreword and annotations, Janet Tavakoli draws striking parallels between the Panic of 1873 and its seven-year Great Depression with the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession that followed. The patterns are unmistakable. This Remastered Hardcover Edition Includes: Additional illustrations beyond the paperback edition. - Corrected text : Errors and inconsistencies from the original edition fixed. - Expert annotations : Additional biographical and background material throughout. - Modern context : Foreword connecting Gilded Age crashes to contemporary financial crises. Contemporary Praise: "A gem of a book. Fowler's writing on trading activity is the best of any period. As Tavakoli writes in the foreword, the traders' classic Reminiscences of a Stock Operator pales in comparison." — San Francisco Review of Books "Its descriptions of the tremendous games of speculation, the rise and fall of fortune, the reckless regard and desperate adventure which shocked and disturbed the world are exceedingly graphic and spirited." — John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), Fireside Poet and author of Snow-Bound "Nearly one hundred and fifty newspapers...all of the leading journals of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago...most flattering notices, read everywhere with avidity." — Orange Judd , Publisher "Its descriptions of the tremendous games of speculation, the rise and fall of fortune, the reckless regard and desperate adventure which shocked and disturbed the world are exceedingly graphic and spirited." John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), Fireside Poet and author of Snow-Bound "Nearly one hundred and fifty newspapers...all of the leading journals of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago,...most flattering notices, read everywhere with avidity." Orange Judd Company (1880) "A gem of a book. Fowler's writing on trading activity is probably the best of any period. As Tavakoli writes in the foreword, the traders' classic Reminiscences of a Stock Operator pales in comparison." San Francisco Review of Books (2016)