Walter A. Friedman was born on June 7, 1962 in Lexington, KY. He is an American
economic historian and Director of the Business History Initiative at the Harvard
Business School. He has written three books.
Fortune Tellers: The Story of America's First Economic Forecasters was published
in 2013. Amazon reports that it tells the story of how the years before the ". . . Great
Depression witnessed the rise of the economic forecasters, pioneers who sought
to use the tools of science to predict the future, with the aim of
profiting from their forecasts."