Eyewitness to Wall Street: 400 Years of Dreamers, Schemers, Busts and Booms.(Review)(Brief Article)

Colbert, David. Eyewitness to Wall Street: 400 Years of Dreamers, Schemers, Busts and Booms. Broadway. Aug. 2001. c.480p. illus. bibliog. index. ISBN 0-7679-0660-8. $30. BUS

Colbert (Eyewitness to America) presents a history of Wall Street using "firsthand" accounts, ranging from the early 1600s in Dutch New Amsterdam to the year 2000. Unfortunately, 400 years is a lot of ground to cover in this Reader's Digest format. While the past century receives a fairly comprehensive examination, the first 300 years are given comparatively short shrift. Obviously, not a lot of eyewitness accounts exist for early American financial history, so why not rethink the book and scale …