He was a self-made millionaire and legendary stock trader, a brilliant investor and savvy venture capitalist. He was Bernard M. Baruch, the most famous and admired figure ever to have conquered Wall Street. And when one of the nation's foremost financial writers took on the challenge of capturing Baruch's genius, the result was destined to become a classic: a sophisticated, superbly written biography exploring Baruch's extraordinary career as never before. Now, this stunning republication of James Grant's critically acclaimed Bernard Baruch: The Adventures of a Wall Street Legend celebrates both the Wall Street wizard and the gifted writer who revealed the man behind the myth. A man of immense charm, who also knew the value of courting the press, Bernard Baruch enjoyed a larger-than-life reputation that rivaled his estimated fortune. Celebrated as "Adviser to Presidents" and "The Park Bench Statesman, " he is, perhaps, best remembered as "The Man Who Sold Out Before the Crash" (a feat of economic foresight that, alas, turned out not to be true, for, while his trading expertise enabled him to salvage most of his investments, Baruch did not sell out on the eve of the 1929 Crash). Yet, as detailed in this fascinating portrait, Baruch's real life was, in actuality, far more intriguing than the myriad stories that would come to be taken as fact. He could appear quite contradictory, changing his views as easily as he bought and sold securities. For instance, why would so shrewd an investor as Bernard Baruch prove reluctant to develop a property like Texasgulf, Inc., after helping to finance it? It was a decision that cost him an opportunity to make as much money as his adoring publicalways imagined him to have. Bernard Baruch made his money in the days of free and untaxed markets. As a governor of the New York Stock Exchange, he resisted the Progressive Era demand for government regulation of trading. However, as Chairman of the War Industries Board i