The go-go years - Hardcover

The 1960s bull market was a wild time of unbridled growth and stellar performance. It remains a pivotal era in American financial history, a time of corporate gunslingers, mutual funds, new-issue stocks, Chinese money, and the conglomerates. But it is also a cautionary tale of Wall Street for today's investor, chronicling the personalities, markets, events, and trends that drove stocks up throughout the 1960s and made millionaires of many—until the inevitable crashes in the 1970s.

Considered a classic among finance classics, The Go-Go Years is the harrowing and humorous story of the "go-go" growth stocks of the 1960s. Their meteoric rise caused a multitude of small investors to thrive for nearly a decade. John Brooks’s award-winning and inimitable style brings to life the people, places, and extraordinary circumstances that changed the course of the stock market forever. It was a time when greed drove the market and fast money was being made and lost in the surge and plunge of growth and performance stocks. Included are the dramatic stories of such high-profile personalities as H. Ross Perot who lost $450 million in one day, Saul Steinberg’s grandiose attempt to take over Chemical Bank, and the self-destructive fall of America’s "Last Gatsby," Eddie Gilbert.

Yale Law Journal said of him that "John Brooks...may well be the best historian of high and low finance since...Charles Francis Adams and his brother Henry chronicled the rascalities of Jim Fisk, Jay Gould, Daniel Drew, and Cornelius Vanderbilt more than a century ago."

"The Go-Go Years is not to be read in the usual manner of Wall Street classics. You do not read this book to see our present situation reenacted in the past, with only the names changed. You read it because it is a wonderful description of the way things were in a different time and place."
—From the Foreword by Michael Lewis

The Go-Go Years is the harrowing and humorous story of the growth stocks of the 1960s and how their meteoric rise caused a multitude of small investors to thrive until the devastating market crashes in the 1970s. It was a time when greed drove the market and fast money was being made and lost as the "go-go" stocks surged and plunged. Included are the stories of such high-profile personalities as H. Ross Perot who lost $450 million in one day, Saul Steinberg's attempt to take over Chemical Bank, and the fall of America's "Last Gatsby," Eddie Gilbert.

Praise for The Go-Go Years

"Those for whom the stock market is mostly a spectator sport will relish the book's verve, color, and memorable one-liners."
—New York Review of Books

"Please don't take The Go-Go Years too much for granted: as effortlessly as it seems to fly, it is nonetheless an unusually complex and thoughtful work of social history."
—New York Times

"Brooks's great contribution is his synthesis of all the elements that made the 1960s the most volatile in Wall Street history . and making so much material easily digestible for the uninitiated."
—Publishers Weekly

"Brooks ... is about the only writer around who combines a thorough knowledge of finance with the ability to perceive behind the dance of numbers 'high, pure, moral melodrama on the themes of possession, domination, and belonging.'"
—Time