This is the story of America's most famous street, Wall Street. No other place is so inextricably linked with the nation's history, the development of capitalism and the dramatic highs and lows of the financial markets. No other place has provoked such mythology, or has been the subject of so many dreams and illusions.

Howard Wachtel's book is fascinating account of the origins of this famous street. Exploring its development through the eighteenth to the twentieth century, he charts its dramatic transformation, offering a window on the past that helps us understand how it became the centre of world finance that we see today. Drawing on original archive research, and illustrated throughout with photographs.

Wachtel looks at the key characters who shaped the course of Wall Street's early years, he traces its wider social history and its physical development and architecture, he focuses on the New York Stock Exchange as the most important institution on the street, he explores how Wall Street has influenced politics, and how it has been shaped by larger political forces around it.