Customer Reviews

The Gold Ring: Jim Fisk, Jay Gould, and Black Friday, 1869

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4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Ackerman manages to make the financial part of this scandal easily comprehensible. He also does a great job of sketching in the principals as living, breathing characters.

At the center of this tale sit Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, an unlikely team-- one a stiff, and tightly self-controlled, the other a flamboyant high-roller who lived openly with his mistress. How they hatched a plot which nearly trashed the entire US economy is more adventure than detective story.

Ackerman has put his tale together with a good assortment of sources (once the gold scheme blew up, lots of people had lots to say, some of it in court), and he manages to give us just enough background for understanding without wandering off down some side street. And he shows how the fallout included the beginnings of federal regulations to protect the US economy.

Originally written in 1988, this is a great piece of work and a welcome reissue (though filled with an extraordinarily large number of typos). Highly recommended.

The book was excellent - just what I was looking for to expand my understanding of this fascinating period of American history. But Kenneth Ackerman needs to hire a proofreader or find a new publisher. The copy of the book (paperback) that I received and read had hundreds of typographical errors - on some pages, there were more than a dozen errors - reversed letters, missing letters, missing punctuation, extra punctuation, duplicate lines. This was not what I expected for a serious historical study, nor for a book purchased from Amazon.com.

This is my third book by Ackerman. The book is excellent. He simplies the details and maintains the readers attention. With the current mortgage meltdown, it's good to know that these things have happened before and the country survived and moved on. BUT . . . (you knew this was coming) I have never seen a book with so many typos. That is inexcusable. Grate arther, good stori, ect., but thos tyops---

Few books written 22 years ago are more timely than this book by Kenneth Ackerman which shows the wretched excesses of the unregulated stock market during they heyday of Messers Jay Gould and Jim Fisk. Taking full advantage of the total lack of interest by the government in their doings (and this could be dissuaded on those rare occasions by a few well placed bribes to a few poor corrupt officials), the two scoundrels made their move to corner the market on gold. There really was no good reason to attempt such a fool-hardy act, the government held the largest reserves and one needed to have an even more than normally disinterested government to pull off such a grand gesture which must have been like scaling a veritable Mount Everest of financial and political corruption.

In this enterprise Gould and Fisk were assisted by two very outstanding unindicted co-conspirators, Abel Corbin, who made a dishonest fortune as an official of the congress and married President Grant's younger sister. There was also William Marcy Tweed, the same "Boss Tweed" whose own excesses were the delight of Thomas Nast, a few years later. Corbin was supposed to keep Grant and the government in line while Tweed made sure that judges issued the correct rulings and the Tenth National Bank honoured checks for whatever amount Fisk and Gould chose to write them.

Gould had a wild idea that if he and his associates cornered the market on gold that somehow this would be good for the country as a whole, promoting exports, low prices and greater prosperity. This probably is the same sentiment some of the more recent titans of industry had regarding their own rather curious approaches to financial responsibility in an under-regulated environment. Needless to say Fisk and Gould did no one any good, particularly in the short term. Credit locked up (why is this always the way?) and with the exception of the wily Cornelius Vanderbilt, no one did particularly well in the long term either. It was Vanderbilt who referred to Gould and Fisk as a bunch of "damned theives eager to put money in their pockets." If anything, the case could be made that this was the very under regulated environment that made possible the collapse of Jay Cook and Company four years later.

This is the perfect sort of book to give to the favorite Ayn Rand fan in one's life. "Who is John Galt?" some may ask. "Where is John Galt," might be the rejoinder to that question, the answer being that Wall Street toughs like Gould and Fisk had someone like for lunch and dinner with an apple in his mouth. This is a very good popular history by Kenneth Ackerman (who has written books on other Gilded Age actors like Garfield and Tweed) which if nothing else shows us that history is doomed to repeat itself once it is forgotten.

The other day I was going through boxes of books that had been placed in storage since I moved to South Carolina. What a surprise to find The Gold Ring among its contents. Apparently I had purchased this book when it first came out in 1989, and for some reason it had gone unread for almsot 20 years.

What a timely book to read, as we enter gosh knows what month of our current recession. This book gives a fantastic account of the manipulations of Jay Gould and Jim Fisk who began as small time operators working for the Erie Railroad in its war with Cornelius Vanderbilt, and who managed to escape jail and ended up befriending Boss Tweed of Tamminy Hall fame. One thing leads to another and eventually they become "friends" with the brother-in-law of President Grant, and then use that friendship to try and manipulate the gold market.

With all the fraud and bad faith dealing that has gone on in the past few years, this book points out that there is nothing new under the sun. As Gould and Fisk began an stock manipulators, printing worthless stock certificates to avoid takeovers, to eventually trying to use insider information to make anothe fortune in gold.

It is a story of greed, avarice, governmental bribery and Wall Street intrigue that makes it an easy book to read and understand.

And while some reviews have focued on the editing, and blaming the author for mistakes in the paperback edition, there are no such mistakes in the First Edition copy that I just read.

"The Gold Ring" by Kenneth D. Ackermann tells the story of one of the audacious financial operations even perpetrated on Wall Street: the attempt in the year 1869 by Jay Gould and Jim Fisk to corner the gold market. The narrative looks at the rise of both men on Wall Street prior to 1869, describes in detail how the gold operation would work, the attempts to rig the gold market through the bribing of federal and state officials include the sitting President U.S. Grant, and on through the collapse of the corner and its financial aftermath on Wall Street and the nation. Ackermann tells an entertaining story of ambition and greed, a story that contains few saints for nearly all the participants in this tale were willing to put personal gain above the public welfare. Although similar operations to corner a particular commodity would be attempted many times afterwards, none would ever top the scale and scope this venture.

The narrative is easy-to-read and quite enjoyable and the reader does not need any prior knowledge of the events or period to understand the story. There are typographical errors that make the book seem more of a student paper in places, but this reviewer feels these are at worst a minor annoyance. If you are interested in the history of the post-Civil War period, this book is certainly worth taking a look at.

I first read this book at its publication and likened it to an amazing bit of fiction. Having recently re-read it, that comparison still rings true. Jim Fisk and Jay Gould foreshadow the financial manipulators and characters of the 20th and 21st centuries. Brash, ballsy and eager to beat the system, these two leap off the pages with their audacity. The Gold Scandal brings some very notable characters including President Ulysses Grant and Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall. Ackerman has penned an entertaining morality tale that seems doomed to repeat itself time and time again.

I loved reading this account of the money game in old New York played by the masters Fisk and Gould. The story was gripping and the themes amazingly relevant to today.

Ackerman writes another accessible, informative and engaging history of the Gilded Age in his book on the Gold Ring. At a time when government regulation was nonexistent and men with deep pockets could reign financial terror; the unthinkable happened and greed ran the country. This book details from start to finish how the key players came to know eachother and plan the gold ring under Jay Gould's masterful strategy. It is a story of daring wits, bribery at the highest levels and pure showmanship that all two men to manipulate the price of gold. Utilizing resources from newspapers, to letters to congressional hearings conducted by James Garfield the reader is given a clear picture of what happened during the gold ring.

I do second what other reviewers have said that this book is full of typos that make it hard to read at times but it does not draw away from the content. Overall this is the book to read if you want to understand further the gold ring and its implications in the financial world.