Steve Fraser's Every Man a Speculator is a cultural history of Wall Street. The monograph is a collection of short stories about the rise and fall of some of the greatest and most famous speculators in American financial history. The author interweaves an assortment of tales about leading financial figures over the past 170 years and the effects of their actions on Main Street. The book is divided into four parts. Part 1 contains four chapters and discusses the origins of Wall Street and the role of some important early figures in Wall Street. The author discusses President Andrew Jackson's disdain for the financial sector and his vendetta to crush the Second Bank of the United States. He also recounts some interesting tales of early financiers including August Belmont and Jay Cooke, who sold bonds for the American government during the Civil War and played a role in the Panic of 1873.

Part 2 largely focuses on the Gilded Age and the rise of Big Business. The author details how J. P. Morgan built a railroad empire and created General Electric through the merger of a number of smaller electrical firms. Fraser then discusses the first Great Merger Wave and the creation of the money trusts that controlled a large portion of American credit. He notes that the introduction of new federal regulations, including the founding of the Federal Reserve, prior to the outbreak of World War I helped to mend the partially estranged relationship between government and big business after the Panic of 1907.

The first Great Merger Wave was also accompanied by a change in attitude with respect to the stock market. Middle-class Americans developed an appetite to invest in the stock market. This is shown by the public's large purchases of Liberty Bonds following the United States's entry into World War I. Part 2 ends with a discussion of the Great Bull Market of the 1920s and its accompanying excesses.

In Part 3, Fraser details how Americans at the time linked the Great Depression with the Great Crash. The stock market crash and ensuing depression led to a series of reforms including the establishment of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Moreover, the stock market took a less prominent role in the American economy over the next 50 years. Wall Street was “no longer the gathering place for the American ruling classes” (p. 502).

Part 4 documents the reemergence of Wall Street, Ronald Reagan, and free market economics. Fraser discusses various aspects of high finance since 1980, including corporate raiders and the recent wave of corporate scandals. He notes that mainstream America has come a long way with respect to Wall Street. The United States is no longer a place where only the ruling classes and elites buy and sell stocks. Now, more than half of American families own stocks. Indeed, America truly has become a shareholder nation over the last 20 years.

Although Every Man a Speculator is well written and details fascinating stories about financial capitalists since the days of Andrew Jackson, the book has some weaknesses. The author basically ignores the entire economic history literature on nineteenth- and twentieth-century financial panics and the Great Depression. There is no mention or discussion of Peter Temin's classic work on the Panic of 1837. The discussion of the Panic of 1873 is also quite pedestrian. The author blames the stock market crash on Jay Gould and ignores other domestic and macroeconomic factors that scholars have identified as important fundamentals in the crisis. These omissions are troublesome. If one is to understand the history of Wall Street in American life, one needs to have a basic understanding of the origins and transmission of financial shocks. Only then can one make an informed discussion of the effects of financial crisis on the common man and different socioeconomic groups.

The book also has some factual inaccuracies about the U.S. economy. Consider Fraser's discussion of American economic performance between 1870 and 1900. He argues that the economy stagnated and profits declined. In reality, real GDP and real stock prices increased during this period. It appears that the author does not distinguish between real and nominal quantities and prices. The fact that prices fell between the Civil War until 1896 does not necessarily mean that the economy was in a depression. Indeed, there is a large body of economic research showing that deflation can be good for an economy if it is caused by a decrease in prices brought about by an increase in aggregate supply often through technological innovation.

The author clearly supports government regulation of the marketplace to curb speculative excesses. Although many economists share this view, they also acknowledge that regulation is not always the answer. Fraser, for example, argues that the Federal Reserve's failure to regulate margin requirements helped fuel a number of financial crises. This simply is inaccurate. There is a large body of empirical evidence dating back to the 1960s that shows regulation of stock margin requirements has little effect. The reasoning behind the ineffectiveness of margin policy is quite simple. As long as there are other ways for individual investors and financial institutions to obtain credit (i.e., mortgages, home equity loans, etc.), regulating margin requirements will have little effect on stock prices or stock volatility

Overall, Fraser has written a valuable cultural history of Wall Street over the last 170 years. Cultural historians with an interest in Wall Street are likely to find this book useful. Economic historians, on the other hand, are less likely to find this book of much interest given that the author ignores much of the relevant literature in economics and financial economic history. Nevertheless, economic historians will find many of the stories of the rise and fall of key figures in American high finance to be enjoyable and stimulating.