John Steele Gordon (born May 7, 1944) is an American writer who specializes in the history of business and finance.
After spending some time in publishing, he left to travel, driving from England to India and back and from New York to Tierra del Fuego, returning as far as Rio de Janeiro.
After working in politics for a few years as a press secretary for two congressmen, he wrote his first book on financial history, The Scarlet Woman of Wall Street (1988), a history of Wall Street in the 1860s.
He has written on technological history, including A Thread Across the Ocean, the story of laying the Atlantic cable in the mid-19th century, and Washington's Monument, a history of the monument and obelisks in general.
In 2019, Mr. Gordon wrote on global warming from a skeptical point of view for Commentary.