American Rascal: How Jay Gould Built Wall Street's Biggest Fortune [Audiobook]
English | ASIN: B09L3M4MKD | 2022 | 8 hours and 45 minutes | MP3@64 kbps | 241 MB
Author: Greg Steinmetz
Narrator: Feodor Chin
The gripping biography of Jay Gould, the greatest 19th-century robber baron, whose brilliance, greed, and bare-knuckled tactics made him richer than Rockefeller and led Wall Street to institute its first financial reforms. Had Jay Gould put his name on a university or concert hall, he would undoubtedly have been a household name today. 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…even if, to do so, he had to pull a fast one on everyone else.
After entering Wall Street at the age of 24, he quickly became notorious when he paralyzed the economy and nearly toppled President Ulysses S. Grant in the Black Friday market collapse of 1869 in an attempt to corner the market on gold—an event that remains among the darkest days in Wall Street history. Through clever financial maneuvers, he gained control over one of every six miles of the country’s rapidly expanding network for railroad tracks—coming close to creating the first truly transcontinental railroad and making himself one of the richest men in America.