Benjamin Rask is born into a line of successful tobacco traders. His father, Solomon, and his mother, Wilhelmina, spend much of their time away from their home in New York City, leaving Rask to be raised by nannies and tutors. From an early age, Rask is obedient, asocial, precocious, and above all dispassionate.

When Rask is 18, both of his parents die unexpectedly. The loss hardly affects him; he’s only interested in examining the financials of his father’s estate. Solomon’s lawyers take this as a sign of precocity. Rask has no interest in running the family tobacco business and delegates its operation to a longtime manager. Rask matriculates to college, where he becomes even more impassive: “[H]e was an inept athlete, an apathetic clubman, an unenthusiastic drinker, an indifferent gambler, a lukewarm lover. He, who owed his fortune to tobacco, did not even smoke” (11). Rask is the opposite of his charming, gregarious, tobacco-loving father.

After graduating Rask spends a few years without direction, during which he grows dissatisfied with his life. At the beginning of the depression of 1893, Rask’s money manager, John S. Winslow Jr., buys gold bonds through less-than-legal means, multiplying Rask’s fortune. For the first time in Rask’s life, something interests him: investing.