The reader is taken on a fascinating tour of Anglo-American high finance over the past two centuries, with detours into Canadian, German and Japanese finance. As the point of departure for his colourful, panoramic survey, Ron Chernow poses a historic riddle: Why did the great financial dynasties - the Rothschilds, Barings, Morgans and Warburgs - flare so brilliantly in the 19th and 20th centuries and then enter into a precipitous decline? Why did such heavyweights give way to more anonymous financial conglomerates, And, most curious of all, why have small investors, banded together in mutual funds, suddenly inherited the financial earth?