The Money Game
The most literary book on Wall Street, written under the pen name 'Adam Smith.' Goodman captures the 1960s markets with novelistic flair and devastating psychological insight. His metaphor of 'the Game' reveals that most market participants are driven by unconscious motivations and identity needs as much as financial analysis. The market as mirror.
The companies anchoring each chapter, Xerox, Polaroid, IBM, McDonnell Douglas, Comsat, plus the era’s gold-standard and silver-certificate material, root the book so firmly in the late 1960s that whole stretches only interest readers curious about market history. One reviewer calls it “Smarmy and overly precious handbook bogged down by hotshot anecdotes,” and another complains of “Lengthy stories to make simple points.” A cluster of readers say the book hasn’t aged well and would have landed better read closer to publication: “Would have been nice to read in 1980s or 90s.” The psychological observations that felt novel in 1968 now show up repeated across dozens of later books, so the central selling point doesn’t feel distinctive anymore. Without a protagonist or plot to organize around, the book drifts between profile, market history, and aphorism, and one reader asks bluntly, “Why on earth are we paying attention to this?”
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
