Robert Sobel

Biography

Sobel was born in the Bronx. He completed his B.S.S. (1951) and M.A. (1952) at City College of New York, and after serving in the U.S. Army, obtained a Ph.D. from New York University in 1957. He started teaching at Hofstra in 1956. Sobel eventually became Lawrence Stessin Distinguished Professor of Business History at Hofstra University.

Sobel and his wife, the former Carole Ritter, had two children. He died from brain cancer at his home in Long Beach, New York, on June 2, 1999, at the age of 68. After his death, the university established the Robert Sobel Endowed Scholarship for Excellence in Business History & Finance.

Books

Sobel's first business history, published in 1965, was The Big Board: A History of the New York Stock Market. It was the first history of the stock market written in over a generation. The commercial and critical success of The Big Board launched Sobel's writing career. During his career, Sobel authored more than 30 books, many articles, book reviews, and scripts for television documentaries and mini-series. From 1972 to 1988, Sobel's weekly investment column, "Knowing the Street", was nationally syndicated through New York Newsday. He also published in national periodicals, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. At the time of his death, Sobel was a contributing editor for Barron's Magazine. He was a regular guest on financial and other news shows, such as Wall Street Week and Crossfire.

Sobel was nearly as famous for his only work of fiction, the 1973 book, For Want of a Nail. This book is an alternate history in which Burgoyne won the Battle of Saratoga during the American Revolutionary War. This work detailed the history of an alternate timeline, complete with footnotes. Sobel had authored or co-authored several actual textbooks. For Want of a Nail was republished in 1997 and won a special achievement Sidewise Award for Alternate History that year.

Wall Street

Sobel's dominant passion was Wall Street, a fascination that he held since his childhood. "It is as though you are walking through a historical theme park, with this engaging man at your side pointing out the sights," said Andrew Tobias, the author and investment guide, in a review in The New York Times of The Last Bull Market: Wall Street in the 1960s (W. W. Norton, 1978).

Most of Sobel's books were written for a general audience, but he never bristled when some scholarly writers dismissed him as a "popularizer," said his colleague and friend George David Smith, a professor of economic history at New York University. "Quite the contrary—he saw that as his mission in life."

Selected bibliography

Fiction

Non-fiction

• *** A paperback reprint of IBM: Colossus in Transition.

References

• Hand, Judson, "If Washington Hadn't Been the Father of His Country," Sunday (New York Daily) News, February 18, 1973.
• MacGregor, Martha, "The Week in Books," New York Post, March 31, 1973.
• Sicilia, DB, "Remembering Robert Sobel (1931-1999)" Enterprise & Society: The International Journal of Business History, Vol. 1, Issue 1, pp. 182–187, (March 2000).
• Skow, John, "Parlor Games," Time, April 9, 1973.

References

1. Henriques, Diana B.. (June 4, 1999). "Robert Sobel, 68, a Historian of Business, Dies". [[The New York Times]].