Many at Lindenwood University played an important role in the creation of this book. The students in my January-term course—my beta site for teaching the history of modern finance through mini-biographies—were a patient audience and provided much constructive criticism. Several of my colleagues at the university, especially Ray Scupin and Peter Griffin, offered invaluable first-reader reactions to and editorial insights into the early manuscript. The staff at the library never tired of my many interlibrary requests for out-of-print books, and Carl Hubenschmidt showed a magical ability to track down obscure articles published many years ago. And I am profoundly grateful to Dean Jay Hardman and Presidents Dennis Spellmann and Jim Evans who, some fifteen years ago, helped restore my damaged psyche by opening a wonderfully fulfilling second career in academia.
The editors at Columbia University Press provided a rookie author with more support than ever expected. Bridget Flannery-McCoy combined an unrelenting cheerfulness with exacting editorial standards; she could request a full rewrite of a chapter in such a positive manner that I felt as though I had been given the opportunity of a lifetime. Her able associate, Stephen Wesley, diligently rounded up a posse of fact-checkers whose remarks gave more nuance to the book, as well as saving the author from many embarrassing inaccuracies. (I hereby absolve all those individuals from any responsibility for errors that remain.)
My most heartfelt thanks go to Peggy Morris, my smart, beautiful, and charming wife. Though a self-described recovering lawyer, she is still most judicious in her assessments. So when she read the initial draft of the first few chapters and pronounced, “This is really good!,” those four words became all the propellant I needed to see the book to completion. She tolerated my writing obsession and the time it consumed with little complaint—though noting on more than one occasion that the shiny new bicycles we bought a few years ago for weekend excursions have never left the garage.