George Goodman - Background, Education, and Career

Background, Education, and Career

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 Oxford where he was studied political economy. His first novel, The Bubble Makers, published simultaneously in the UK and the United States, was written instead of a thesis.

In 1954, before the Special Forces became the Green Berets, he joined the US Army Special Forces in the Intelligence group know as Psywar (Psychological Warfare) .

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. Introducing psychology (chapter 1 is titled “identity and anxiety”) he changed the style of financial writing from that point forward. Of his many books Supermoney, Paper Money, Powers of Mind, and The Roaring Eighties are among the best known. 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.

He was a member of the Editorial Board of The New York Times, an editor of Esquire Magazine, and was a founding member of New York Magazine where he worked with such writers as Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin, and Gloria Steinem.

In 1984, Goodman came to television as the creator, anchor and editor-in-chief of Adam Smith's Money World. Running on Public Broadcasting in the U.S., it became the most honored program in its field, winning eight Emmy nominations and five Emmy Awards, as well as the Overseas Press Club Award. The documentary specials won gold medals at the Houston International Film Festival and the Flagstaff Film Festival. The show used cartoon characters and reports from the field to explain and simplify complex financial subjects to its audience. Airing in over forty countries, it was also the first American business news show broadcast in the Soviet Union airing weekly with a Russian soundtrack.