Thomas William Lawson

Born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1857, he left school young, worked his way up through office jobs, and eventually became a wealthy Boston stockbroker. His fame grew not just from his market success but from his willingness to write openly about high finance, speculation, and the people who controlled it.

His best-known books include Friday, the Thirteenth, a 1907 novel built around a dramatic stock-market panic, and Frenzied Finance, a widely read series attacking corporate and Wall Street abuses. That mix of firsthand experience, scandal, and storytelling made him an unusually colorful literary figure in the world of business writing.

Lawson died in 1925, but his work still stands out for turning finance into popular reading. For listeners who enjoy true stories of money, power, and ambition, he remains an arresting voice from America’s Gilded Age and early twentieth century.