| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Every Man a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life. By Steve Fraser. (New York: HarperCollins, 2005. xxiv, 721 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0-06-662048-1.)

Every Man a Speculator is not strictly a history of Wall Street; it is a history, since the United States began, of what novelists, cartoonists, humorists, and journalists have said about people who made their living working in the financial industry. Apparently, they never said anything nice. While most historians fall in love with their subject, Steve Fraser never offers a positive view or even a mention of the importance of the financial system to the health of an economy. Indeed, he attributes the existence of the entire industry to "purely selfish and irrational economic behavior" (p. 28).

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