The Money Game in Old New York

The Money Game in Old New York PDF

Author: Clifford Browder

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2021-11-21

Total Pages: 492

ISBN-13: 0813187893

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"I got to be a millionaire afore I know'd it hardly," remarked the Wall Street financier Daniel Drew (1797-1879). An uneducated farm boy from Putnam County, New York, he became in turn a successful cattle drover, a circus clown, tavern keeper, a shrewd Hudson River steamboat operator, and an unscrupulous speculator. As the colorful "Uncle Daniel" of Wall Street-his whiskered face seamed with wrinkles and twinkling with steel-gray eyes—time and again he disrupted the financial markets with manipulations whereby he either won or lost millions of dollars. Having "got religion" upon hearing a scary hell-fire sermon at the age of fourteen, Drew was also a fervent Methodist. Rumors of his financial operations—epic struggles that pitted him against Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, and Jim Fisk, and that subjected him to threats of arrest and even kidnapping, and on one occasion to a most undignified flight from the state-baffled and disturbed the Methodists, who admittedly had little grasp of Wall Street but knew firsthand Brother Drew's tearful repentance at prayer meetings and his generosity in founding churches and seminaries. With its dual commitment to religion and rascality, Drew's career is a rich study in contradictions, an exciting chronicle of high drama and low comedy capped by bankruptcy. To understand Drew in his complexity, the author argues, is to get a grip on the heady and exploitative age that produced him—the yesterday of "smartness" and "go ahead" that helped engender the America of today. Based on primary sources, this is the first full-fledged biography of Drew, who hitherto has been known chiefly through a fictionalized and fraudulent account of 1910.

Seven Games: A Human History

Seven Games: A Human History PDF

Author: Oliver Roeder

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2022-01-25

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 1324003782

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A group biography of seven enduring and beloved games, and the story of why—and how—we play them. Checkers, backgammon, chess, and Go. Poker, Scrabble, and bridge. These seven games, ancient and modern, fascinate millions of people worldwide. In Seven Games, Oliver Roeder charts their origins and historical importance, the delightful arcana of their rules, and the ways their design makes them pleasurable. Roeder introduces thrilling competitors, such as evangelical minister Marion Tinsley, who across forty years lost only three games of checkers; Shusai, the Master, the last Go champion of imperial Japan, defending tradition against “modern rationalism”; and an IBM engineer who created a backgammon program so capable at self-learning that NASA used it on the space shuttle. He delves into the history and lore of each game: backgammon boards in ancient Egypt, the Indian origins of chess, how certain shells from a particular beach in Japan make the finest white Go stones. Beyond the cultural and personal stories, Roeder explores why games, seemingly trivial pastimes, speak so deeply to the human soul. He introduces an early philosopher of games, the aptly named Bernard Suits, and visits an Oxford cosmologist who has perfected a computer that can effectively play bridge, a game as complicated as human language itself. Throughout, Roeder tells the compelling story of how humans, pursuing scientific glory and competitive advantage, have invented AI programs better than any human player, and what that means for the games—and for us. Funny, fascinating, and profound, Seven Games is a story of obsession, psychology, history, and how play makes us human.

The Total Money Makeover: Classic Edition

The Total Money Makeover: Classic Edition PDF

Author: Dave Ramsey

Publisher: Thomas Nelson

Published: 2013-09-17

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 1595555285

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Do you want to build a budget that actually works for you? Are you ready to transform your relationship with money? This New York Times bestseller has already helped millions of people just like you learn how to develop everyday money-saving habits with the help of America's favorite personal finance expert, Dave Ramsey. By now, you've already heard all of the nutty get-rich-quick schemes and the fiscal diet fads that leave you with a lot of quirky ideas but not a penny in your pocket. If you're tired of the lies and sick of the false promises, Dave is here to provide practical, long-term help. The Total Money Makeover is the simplest, most straightforward game plan for completely changing your finances. And, best of all, these principles are based on results, not pie-in-the-sky fantasies. This is the financial reset you've been looking for. The Total Money Makeover: Classic Edition will give you the tools and the encouragement you need to: Design a sure-fire plan for paying off all debt--from your cars to your home and everything in between using the debt snowball method Break bad habits and make lasting changes when it comes to your relationship with money Recognize the 10 most dangerous money myths Secure a healthy nest egg for emergencies and set yourself up for retirement Become financially healthy for life Live like no one else, so later you can LIVE (and GIVE) like no one else! This edition of The Total Money Makeover includes new, expanded "Dave Rants" that tackle marriage conflict, college debt, and so much more. The Total Money Makeover: Classic Edition also includes brand new back-of-the-book resources to help you make The Total Money Makeover your new reality.

This Is All I Got

This Is All I Got PDF

Author: Lauren Sandler

Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks

Published: 2021-05-25

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 039958997X

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A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • From an award-winning journalist, a poignant and gripping immersion in the life of a young, homeless single mother amid her quest to find stability and shelter in the richest city in America LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/JEAN STEIN BOOK AWARD • “Riveting . . . a remarkable feat of reporting.”—The New York Times Camila is twenty-two years old and a new mother. She has no family to rely on, no partner, and no home. Despite her intelligence and determination, the odds are firmly stacked against her. In this extraordinary work of literary reportage, Lauren Sandler chronicles a year in Camila’s life—from the birth of her son to his first birthday—as she navigates the labyrinth of poverty and homelessness in New York City. In her attempts to secure a safe place to raise her son and find a measure of freedom in her life, Camila copes with dashed dreams, failed relationships, the desolation of abandonment, and miles of red tape with grit, humor, and uncanny resilience. Every day, more than forty-five million Americans attempt to survive below the poverty line. Every night, nearly sixty thousand people sleep in New York City-run shelters, 40 percent of them children. In This Is All I Got, Sandler brings this deeply personal issue to life, vividly depicting one woman's hope and despair and her steadfast determination to change her life despite the myriad setbacks she encounters. This Is All I Got is a rare feat of reporting and a dramatic story of survival. Sandler’s candid and revealing account also exposes the murky boundaries between a journalist and her subject when it becomes impossible to remain a dispassionate observer. She has written a powerful and unforgettable indictment of a system that is often indifferent to the needs of those it serves, and that sometimes seems designed to fail. Praise for This Is All I Got “A rich, sociologically valuable work that’s more gripping, and more devastating, than fiction.”—Booklist “Vivid, heartbreaking. . . . Readers will be moved by this harrowing and impassioned call for change.”—Publishers Weekly “A closely observed chronicle . . . Sandler displays her journalistic talent by unerringly presenting this dire situation. . . . An impressive blend of dispassionate reporting, pungent condemnation of public welfare, and gritty humanity.” —Kirkus Reviews

Iron Empires

Iron Empires PDF

Author: Michael Hiltzik

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 453

ISBN-13: 0544770315

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From Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Hiltzik, the epic tale of the clash for supremacy between America's railroad titans.

Reared in a Greenhouse

Reared in a Greenhouse PDF

Author: Dorothy B. Wexler

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-03-05

Total Pages: 453

ISBN-13: 1135678588

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Beloved as the family storyteller, Dorothy Winthrop Bradford left behind at her death in 1987 diaries, letters, scrapbooks and memorabilia that date back to the Civil War and provide a picture of a way of life long gone - of a period when leisure time was plentiful and cars were few, when her hometown of Hamilton, Massachusetts was open country and Boston a closed society. These materials provide an intimate view of the vanished lifestyle of the upper classes between the two world wars. At the heart of the story is Dorothy Bradford's own life, and the 82 years she spent in the small town where she was born. It was a life, however, set against the vast canvas of her extened family, whose stories transport the reader back to colonial times, where one of her ancestors was the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and far across America and to the Caribbean, Europe, and Africa. From the Civil War to the Second World War, from turn-of-the-century Puerto Rico to the glories of the still-unspoiled West, the book is a virtual who's who of American h istory, filled with cameos by Teddy Roosevelt, Edith Wharton, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry James, Thomas Jefferson, and many more. Richly illustrated with more than 300 photographs, this intriguing volume looks at a woman who's life may have seemed, on the surface, narrow and predictable, but in reality, touched upon many of the great currents of American history.

For the Love of Money

For the Love of Money PDF

Author: Sam Polk

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2017-07-11

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1476785996

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"A former hedge-fund trader presents a memoir about coming of age on Wall Street, his obsessive pursuit of money, his disillusionment and the radical new way he has come to define success, "--NoveList