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8vo. Pp. 216. Original light green publisher's Cloth, spine and upper cover gilt lettered, wear to spine lettering, frayed at head and tail, and overall rubbing to cloth, extremities bruised at corners albeit a poor copy.
First edition. Scarce.
If this wasn't quite as scarce a title or fascinating to read, it would not be offered in this condition. However it sits firmly at the forefront of Wall Street literature. In style, in tone, Dies brings alive the glory days of an earlier century, when speculation reigned unfettered, and these monarchs of speculation walk through, out of the page into memory. Fourteen lives are encapsulated; each one accorded a particular chalice.
The famous preside like Livermore, and his eminence gris, Arthur Cutten, the mystery man in "Reminiscences", like Bet-a-million Gates, Like Benjamin Hutchinson who was the hero of Dies' novel, The Plunger, possibly the greatest in the only game in town, when the prize was the most fundamental, and the source of the world's foodstuffs, wheat, when to corner wheat on La Salle street was a prize apart.
From the sublime to the ridiculous Dies devotes an account of Doctor Crawford's speculative forays into the egg market. Who else would wind up long of 22,000 contracts representing over 3 billion eggs? The poor doctor broke one too many. There are others less celebrated and the author went on to write about Soybeans, and had published in 1952, a history of the street, Behind the Wall Street Curtain. However he really found his voice in this title and The Plunger. He made the mundane mythic, and accorded its players a heroic status.
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