Wall Street : America's dream palace / Steve Fraser.

Series from jacket.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 181-192) and index.

1. The Aristocrat -- 2. The Confidence Man -- 3. The Hero -- 4. The Immoralist.

"This book recounts the colorful history of America's love-hate relationship with Wall Street. Steve Fraser frames his fascinating analysis around the roles of four iconic Wall Street types - the aristocrat, the confidence man, the hero, and the immoralist - all recurring figures who yield surprising insights about how the nation has wrestled, and still wrestles, with fundamental questions of wealth and work, democracy and elitism, greed and salvation. Spanning the years from the first Wall Street panic of 1792 to the dot.com bubble-and-bust and Enron scandals of our own time, the book is full of stories and portraits of such large-than-life figures as J. P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Michael Milken. Fraser considers the conflicting attitudes of ordinary Americans toward the Street and concludes with a brief rumination on the recent notion of Wall Street as a haven for Everyman."--BOOK JACKET.