George Goodman
| George Goodman | |
|---|---|
| Born |
George Jerome Waldo Goodman August 10, 1930 St. Louis, Missouri |
| Died | January 3, 2014 (aged 83) Miami, Florida |
| Other names | Adam Smith |
| Alma mater | Harvard University, Oxford University |
| Occupation | Author, economics commentator |
| Spouse(s) | Sally Brophy (m. 1961–2007; her death) |
| Children | Two |
George Jerome Waldo Goodman (August 10, 1930 – January 3, 2014) was an American author and economics broadcast commentator, best known by his pseudonym Adam Smith (which was assigned by Clay Felker at New York magazine in order to keep his published articles about Wall Street anonymous). He also wrote fiction under the name "George Goodman".
Goodman was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Alexander Mark Goodman and Viona Cremer Goodman. He attended Harvard College, graduating magna cum laude, and served as an editor of The Harvard Crimson. Goodman won a Rhodes Scholarship to Brasenose College, Oxford, where he read for the B. Litt. His first novel, The Bubble Makers, published simultaneously in the UK and the United States, was written during this period.
In 1954, before the Special Forces became the Green Berets, he joined the US Army Special Forces in the Intelligence group known as Psywar (psychological warfare). In 1961, Goodman married American actress Sally Brophy. They eventually had two children before her death in 2007.
His personal style of presenting economic facts and data has been described as that of "a witty, urbane dinner guest, a droll observer of human affairs," rather than a stodgy economics professor. In fact, Goodman pioneered a style of financial writing that made the language and concepts of Wall Street more understandable and accessible to the typical investor.
Goodman's first non-fiction book, The Money Game (1968), was a number one bestseller for over a year. In the book: Paper Money (1981), he memorably introduced the catchphrase "Assume a can opener" to mock the tendency of economists to make unjustified assumptions and asked "Why are the economists almost always wrong?" During a stint in Hollywood, he wrote screen plays, including that for The Wheeler Dealers, starring James Garner and Lee Remick, adapted from his novel of the same title.
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