Iron Empires: Robber Barons, Railroads, and the Making of Modern America

ISBN: 0544770315

Author: Hiltzik, Michael

Condition: New

Engrossing [Hiltzik is] an able narrator, with an eye for telling detail.-New York Times Book ReviewFrom Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Hiltzik, the epic tale of the clash for supremacy between Americas railroad titans.In 1869, when the final spike was driven into the Transcontinental Railroad, few were prepared for its seismic aftershocks. Once a hodgepodge of short, squabbling lines, Americas railways soon exploded into a titanic industry helmed by a pageant of speculators, crooks, and visionaries. The vicious competition between empire builders such as Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, J. P. Morgan, and E. H. Harriman sparked stock market frenzies, panics, and crashes; provoked strikes that upended the relationship between management and labor; transformed the nations geography; and culminated in a ferocious two-man battle that shook the nations financial markets to their foundations and produced dramatic, lasting changes in the interplay of business and government.Spanning four decades and featuring some of the most iconic figures of the Gilded Age, Iron Empires reveals how the robber barons drove the country into the twentieth century-and almost sent it off the rails.