David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

will be if he graduates high school. Then
he can go drive a truck, but at least he’ll
have a high school degree.’” On the day
he finally did graduate, Cohn’s mother
was a fountain of tears. “I’ve never seen
anyone cry so much in my life,” he said.
When Gary Cohn was twenty-two, he
got a job selling aluminum siding and
window frames for U.S. Steel in
Cleveland. He had just graduated from
American University after a middling
academic career. One day just before
Thanksgiving, while visiting the
company’s sales office on Long Island,
he persuaded his manager to give him
the day off and ventured down to Wall
Street. A few summers earlier, he had
been an intern at a local brokerage firm