Though George J. W. Goodman would achieve his greatest fame as a financial writer, best-selling author, and television host under the pseudonym "Adam Smith," in his forty-year career he has worked in nearly every venue available to feature writers. As the older mass magazines died, he found a niche in the expanding market for business journalism. During the 1960s he achieved fame as a practitioner of the "New Journalism" at the first and most influential of the new city magazines. With much less fanfare he directed a bold and irreverent trade magazine for investors and fund managers. During the 1980s his stylish columns helped redefine a struggling men's magazine. Through all this work has run an appealing and recognizable persona--that of a witty, urbane dinner guest, a droll observer of human affairs as comfortable discussing group psychology and cultural myths as he is business.

Goodman was born in...