Writing that book purged me of whatever vestigial Marxism I had picked up in the course of my education. I came away more certain than ever that history is not, as Karl Marx held, a process of social forces leading to more or less inevitable conclusions. Human history is the result of the acts of individual human beings, whose acts of good and evil can change the world.
Business history is full of individual agents of change who alter the way things are done.
In examining their lives, it's often harder to come to definitive judgments than it is to judge other historical heroes and villains. Deeds that appeared scandalous in one business era can appear perfectly justified decades later, and vice-versa. He also helped to create the modern financial system. Who Invented Modern Finance . Millionaire tells the tale of a most unlikely adventurer.