MEN OF WEALTH

This is virtually a history of wealth, dramatized through biographical approach to individual money monarchs. In the process the author gives us a record of economic systems, and of the various instruments of wealth which were devised in an ever changing, ever more complicated industrial world. Each figure is chosen because he represents a period or a system, for example, Fugger the Rich, who emerged from feudalism to prelude the dawn of capitalism; John Law, the gambler, whose Mississippi Bubble was the greatest gamble of all time; the Rothschilds, acquisition for acquisition's sake; Cecil Rhodes, who built an empire; Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, etc. Richly informative -- often exciting -- but a book keyed to men's interests.