Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons [Paperback]

Edward J. Renehan Jr. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 18, 2006

Though reviled for more than a century as Wall Street's greatest villain, Jay Gould was in fact its most original creative genius. Gould was the robber baron's robber baron, the most astute financial and business strategist of his time and also the most widely hated. In Dark Genius of Wall Street, acclaimed biographer Edward J. Renehan, Jr., combines lively anecdotes with the rich social tapestry of the Gilded Age to paint the portrait of the most talented financial buccaneer of his generation-- and one of the inventors of modern business.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In the late 19th century, strong and well-moneyed families such as the Morgans and the Vanderbilts controlled the fortunes of Wall Street and the emerging industries. Renehan, author of splendid biographies of the Kennedys, Theodore Roosevelt and the naturalist John Burroughs, turns in a masterful glance at the social history of the Gilded Age as well as a brilliant biography of Gould, who outfoxed many of these other wealthy industrialists to win fame and fortune. Although his early work as a surveyor and a tanner did not bring Gould much wealth, he learned to engage in shrewd business practices that would eventually allow him to gain some dominance in the tanning industry. Wall Street and the newly emerging rail industries soon attracted his financial eye, and he turned his full attention to them. While he initially dabbled at the edges of the stock market, he picked up enough financial savvy to engineer a scheme to corner the gold market in 1869 and cause the infamous Black Friday frenzy. Renehan deftly chronicles Gould's canny financial successes in the acquisitions of the Erie, the Union and Pacific, and the Atlantic and Pacific railroads as well as the emerging telegraph industry. Maligned by his competitors and the media as an unscrupulous businessman, Gould never achieved the fame and status of Cornelius Vanderbilt or J.P. Morgan. Yet, as Renehan points out so gracefully, Gould was simply an ambitious financier in an ambitious time before the existence of regulations that his own financial deals helped create. Renehan's sumptuous prose and his dazzling research and style provide a window into Gould's ambitions and offer a first-rate social history of the financial workings of his time. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Renehan claims to offer the first unbiased biography of Jay Gould (1836-92), financier and family man, which is presented against the backdrop of the cultural and social realities of the Gilded Age. This is the saga of the master of the nation's railroads and telegraph systems when they were the fastest growing new technologies of that age. On Wall Street he crafted financial devices and strategies unique in his day, and Renehan concludes that Gould was no more sinister than his competitors. Particularly fascinating are the details of how Gould cornered the gold market in 1869, which led to the infamous Black Friday panic. The author notes that Gould, one of the inventors of modern business, is too important a player in U.S. business history to be misunderstood, and a recent inflation-adjusted listing of the all-time richest Americans (which compares fortunes as percentages of GNP) places Gould eighth--after Cornelius Vanderbilt and John J. Astor but ahead of Henry Ford, J. P. Morgan, and Bill Gates. Mary Whaley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (April 18, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465068863
• ISBN-13: 978-0465068869
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #909,100 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The smartest guy on The Street, June 3, 2005

By 

Linda Shookster (New York City) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons (Hardcover)

Many of us grew up in the greater NY area and have visited Jay Gould's opulent castle, Lyndhurst, on the Hudson River in Tarrytown. But the man himself has remained a mystery until I read Mr. Renehan's fast-paced bio of this nineteenth century transportation and communications mogul. Dark Genius takes the reader to a byzantine world where anything and anyone can be bought for a price, and, hence, one could make a fortune doing so, sans scruples. Mr. Gould, driven to make a fortune, possibly by his impoverished childhood experiences in Roxbury, NY, and without the moral backbone to restrain him from using his enormous intelligence to exploit Wall Street, succeeds marvelously at his goals. Perhaps in envy, the press and his rivals berate him until his dying day. He literally becomes a national pariah, only because he plays the game better than anyone else. In private, he is a good family man, with compassion for his relatives who are down on their luck. Having sought religion and never found it, Mr. Gould is curiously devoid of hypocrisy, much to the chagrin of his whitewashed rivals. This book is a must-read for anyone with an interest in the Gilded Age or the history of New York City. Mr. Renehan has succeeded in writing a most engaging chronicle of an era that we all hope is long gone, yet piques all our romantic tastes.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thorough but technically challenging, November 30, 2005

By 

Peter Lorenzi (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons (Hardcover)

Renehan really did his homework. He also does a fair job of trying to reduce some of the mischaracterizations and misunderstandings about some of Jay Gould's machinations. Yet Gould remains less than admirable and still a bit of an enigma. The primary difficulty is the need for degrees in law and finance to fully appreciate the intricacies of Gould's schemes. Some were brilliant. Some schemes were lucky. Most of the time meant to manipulate markets. Gould's repeated use of stock shorting, watered down stocks, "pools" and injunctions makes one's head spin. Gould and his regular colleague in crime, Jim Fisk, used the law -- especially easily swayed or purchased judges -- to have their way with the financial markets.

But he remains an unsympathetic if not fully appreciated character. He did no worse -- in most respects -- than his equally unscrupulous colleagues. Some of this is a sign of the times, when unethical if not downright evil men did their best to exploit the immature markets, pre technology, pre regulation, and prior to any professional standaqrds or ethics.

Reading Gould's life story shows -- for the most part -- how he sort of stumbled into this life of milking the markets. His motives remain somewhat hidden. All in all, Gould comes across as an unsavory genius, not just a dark one. The story is highly complex and sometimes bogs down in the details that don't come across clearly in a biography. Read slowly.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Splendid Look at the Master of the Game, August 2, 2005

By 

Standard Oil Tycoon - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons (Hardcover)

Any history of finance and entrepreneurs is incomplete without noting the paramount character of Jay Gould. However, few unbiased writings exist on the life of the so-called "Dark Genius". Gould was painted as the Ty Cobb of business - a talented master of the game, but also a vilified character held in contempt by his contemporaries. Renehan strips away the years of misinterpretation and provides his readers with an honest look at a man who deserves our attention. Business is not a place for the timid. If it were then we would live in a drastically different and in my view a deplorable state of affairs. Gould took an ambitious and aggressive posture in his dealings, and by so doing helped build the industrial might of early 20th century America. Furthermore, much of the financial wizardry that we take for granted today originated in the creative thought of Gould. This book is an absolute must for anyone seeking to understanding business.