Financial writer John Brooks takes us behind the scenes of Wall Street's most fascinating stories. His 1969 classic isn't your typical dry business book - it's a collection of true tales that read like financial thrillers. Brooks unpacks the 1962 market crash, Xerox's remarkable rise, and Ford's expensive Edsel disaster. He tells us how Piggly Wiggly's founder tried to outsmart Wall Street, why GE's top executives couldn't communicate with each other, and what really happened when sterling faced its biggest crisis. Each story reveals timeless truths about money, markets, and human nature that still matter today. As Warren Buffett notes, these lessons never get old.
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Summary
Business isn't just about numbers—it's a human drama of ambition, mistakes, and occasional brilliance. Behind every corporate ledger lies a story of people navigating complexity, sometimes failing spectacularly, but always learning. The true measure of success? Not perfection, but the resilience to keep moving forward. History teaches valuable lessons in that regard.
The Only Constant is Fluctuation!
If you've ever wondered what real panic looks like, this would show you. One Monday in May 1962, the stock market had its second-worst drop ever. Stocks lost $20.8 billion in value! People were selling stocks so fast that even the machines couldn't keep up. The poor ticker tape (old-school Twitter for stock prices) fell behind by over an hour. But then, the very next day, everyone suddenly decided they wanted to buy instead of sell. Why? Because telephone company...
Functional, not perfect!
Ford spent a fortune, about $2.5 billion in today's money, creating what they thought would be the perfect car. They researched exhaustively, hired the best talent, and promoted it like crazy. The result? The Edsel - a car whose front grille looked like, as critics noted, "an Oldsmobile sucking a lemon."The story is deliciously ironic. Ford's marketing whizzes spent countless hours picking the perfect name, only to ignore all their research and name it "Edsel" after the founder's son. They...
The Great American Tax Tale
For our third story, Brooks takes us on a fascinating journey through America's complicated relationship with income tax. In 1913, when the tax first started, it was simple - rich folks paid a bit, everyone else paid nothing. Fast forward to today, and we've got a system so complex it needs super-computers to keep track of who owes what. Wars changed it. World War II turned tax from a rich person's burden into everyone's business.But here's where it gets tragic...
At Wall Street, Secrets Become Currency
In the shadowy world of stock trading, information has always been more valuable than gold. The Texas Gulf Sulphur case isn't just a legal drama—it's a revealing peek into the heart of financial ethics.Picture a remote Canadian wilderness where a group of geologists stumble upon a mineral deposit worth millions. But before announcing their discovery, several company insiders start buying stock on the quiet. It's like finding buried treasure and telling only your closest friends before the map goes public.The...
Lessons from Xerox's Rise
In 1938, Chester Carlson worked late in his kitchen laboratory above a Queens bar, trying to solve a common office problem: making copies of documents. Back then, if you needed five copies of something, you had to write it five times or pay someone to do it. After countless attempts and some strange-smelling experiments, Carlson created the first xerographic copy - just a simple date and location: "10-22-38 ASTORIA." But...Nobody cared. For five years, every major company turned him down....
The Day Wall Street Put People First
In November 1963, Wall Street faced a problem that threatened to destroy thousands of people's savings. A stockbroker firm called Ira Haupt & Co. had made a terrible mistake - they trusted a fraudster who gave them fake warehouse receipts for oil that didn't exist. When this fraud was discovered, Haupt couldn't pay back its debts. More importantly, 20,000 innocent customers who had nothing to do with oil trading couldn't access their stocks or money. What happened next was unprecedented....
Corporate Double-Speak and Ethics
In 1961, General Electric, America's fifth-largest company, got caught playing a rather expensive game of "I didn't hear that." Top executives at GE were secretly meeting competitors to fix prices on electrical equipment, driving up costs for everyone from local governments to your grandmother's power bill.When caught, GE's leadership put on a masterclass in corporate confusion. Mid-level managers claimed they got orders with "winks," while top brass insisted they'd been crystal clear about following the law. One executive, Raymond Smith,...
The Man Who Almost Beat Wall Street
Ever wonder why you can grab your own groceries instead of having a clerk do it for you? Thank Clarence Saunders, the same fellow who nearly brought Wall Street to its knees in 1923. Operating out of Memphis, Saunders created Piggly Wiggly, America's first self-service grocery store. He got rich, built a massive pink marble mansion, and was living the high life until Wall Street traders started betting against his company's stock. They borrowed Piggly Wiggly shares from brokers. They...
Business with a Soul
David Lilienthal wasn't your typical businessman. Picture a guy who ran the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Atomic Energy Commission, two of the most powerful government institutions of his time. Lilienthal was a visionary who believed in using large-scale systems to solve real human problems. When he left government in 1950, he dove headfirst into the business world - not to make a quick buck, but to prove that business could be a force for genuine social good.Lilienthal wasn't motivated...
Stockholder Meetings Reveal the Real Power Behind Big Business
When most people think of big corporations, they imagine faceless giants making decisions behind closed doors. But the reality is the annual stockholder meeting - a corporate circus where ordinary people who own tiny pieces of massive companies get to ask questions directly to the top brass. Professional stockholders are the unexpected heroes of this story. These aren't your typical investors. They're persistent, sometimes eccentric individuals who make it their mission to challenge corporate leadership. Take Wilma Soss and Lewis...
One Free Bite
This is the story of Donald Wohlgemuth, a space-suit engineer whose career move sparked a landmark legal battle that would become a cornerstone of trade secrets law.We're in 1962 America: Science was racing toward the moon. Donald Wohlgemuth, a chemical engineer, was working for B.F. Goodrich, a company renowned for pioneering high-altitude and space suits. At 31, he was managing Goodrich's space-suit engineering department, having contributed significantly to the Mercury astronaut suit designs.When International Latex - another company - offered...
How Global Bankers Saved a Currency from Collapse
In 1964, The British pound, once the most powerful currency in the world, was under siege. Speculators—financial predators who bet against currencies—were convinced they could force Britain into a humiliating devaluation. Opposite them stood Alan Hayes from the New York Federal Reserve and Lord Cromer from the Bank of England. The pound wasn't just a currency; it was a national symbol. So, Hayes and Cromer weren't just protecting numbers on a spreadsheet, but the very economic dignity of a nation.The...
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About the Author
John Brooks is best known for his seminal work Business Adventures which, in 2014, Bill Gates called the “best book on business ever”.
Brooks was a financial journalist and longtime contributor to The New Yorker magazine, where he worked for many years as a staff writer specializing in business and finance, including numerous interviews with business luminaries during his long tenure.
More on: https://www.internationalliteraryproperties.com/portfolio/john-brooks
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