The Robber Barons: A Definitive History of the Gilded Age Titans Who Transformed the American Economy

Josephson, Matthew

ISBN 10: 0156767902 / ISBN 13: 9780156767903

Published by Harper Paperbacks, 1962

About this Item

Seller Inventory # BSM.1924S

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Robber Barons: A Definitive History of the Gilded Age Titans Who Transformed the American Economy
• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
• Publication Date: 1962
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0156767902
• ISBN 13: 9780156767903
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: very_good

About this title

Synopsis

Prize-winning historian and biographer Matthew Josephson's The Robber Barons is the story of the Gilded Age's giant American capitalists who seized economic power after the Civil War and altered the shape of American life forever.

The definitive book on the rise and power of early American capitalists, The Robber Barons examines the careers of such masters of finance and industry as J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, E. H. Harriman, and Henry Clay Frick. In a fascinating narrative, mixing social, economic, and political history, Josephson shows that under the command of these industry titans, the country progressed from a mainly agrarian-mercantile society to an economy propelled predominantly by mass production.

"With great verve and a fine sense of its dramatic values, what [Josephson] has written is not a mere series of biographies but a genuine history, with the stories of the great American capitalists skillfully interwoven, and with an eye always on the broader social background."—New York Times Book Review

About the Author

Matthew Josephson (1899-1978) received a Guggenheim fellowship and was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He is the author of, among other books, Al Smith: Hero of the Cities, winner of the Van Wyck Brooks prize for biography and history.