For nearly three centuries the spectacular rise and fall of the South Sea Company has gripped the public imagination as the most graphic warning to investors of the dangers of unbridled speculation. Yet history repeats itself and the same elemental forces that drove up the price of South Sea...

For as long as they have existed, stock markets have attracted fraudsters. "Napoleon Is Dead" is the fascinating tale of one of the earliest stock market scams; a tale of greed, deceit and the public humiliation of Admiral Cochrane, one of the greatest seamen of the nineteenth century. Early on...