Business Adventures Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street

Business Adventures collects twelve nonfiction accounts of money, companies and markets in the United States. Each piece centres on a single episode in which a well-known firm or financial event became famous, or infamous.

The subjects include the Edsel, the Ford Motor Company car that cost $350 million and failed, and the rapid rise of Xerox. Other pieces cover scandals at General Electric and Texas Gulf Sulphur, the market crash of 1962, and the collapse of a well-known brokerage firm. One chapter follows an attempt by American bankers to rescue the British pound.

John Brooks, a longtime contributor to The New Yorker, works as a reporter. He builds each episode from specific, telling detail and from the personalities involved, so the finance reads as a series of human dramas rather than a string of figures.

The book suits readers curious about how corporate and financial life works, including those with no background in either. The events are decades old, yet the pressures and mistakes they show still apply to companies and markets now. Expect self-contained pieces that can be read in any order, with an engaging, narrative tone throughout.