Iron Empires

Robber Barons, Railroads, and the Making of Modern America

By: Michael Hiltzik

Narrated by: Nicholas Tecoksy

Length: 14 hrs and 57 mins

Publisher's summary

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, America's 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 nation's geography; and culminated in a ferocious two-man battle that shook the nation's 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 20th century—and almost sent it off the rails.

©2020 Michael Hiltzik (P)2020 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Strain Time

There is a lot of detail in this book. It covers multiple stretches of time and isn't really covered in chronological order. Consequently, this is not an easy read although it does have it's moments. The back end of the book is a kind of critique of Gilded Age Robber Baron Capitalism.

worth a listen

Focused on a few leading men. Lost or hard to follow big picture of overall growth of railroads. Printed book had maps, obviously not on audio.

Fascinating history that pulls the whole story tog

Fascinating history that pulls the whole story together from the beginning and well into the last century. Well narrated, it was easy to follow the complexities of the merges and personalities. A great listsen for a long holiday weekend in Covid-19 isolation.

History doesn't get any better

At first, I thought this would be a wandering, unfocused work, as it started in with various cultural touchstones: a poetic view of the lands the railroads were about to occupy, and views of the personal experience of riding trains at an early time. But presently things turned to the business, the deals, and the prominent individuals, and the author showed a superior grip on all these matters. The colorful details were well-placed throughout, to effectively flesh out the whole story. I have listened to these stories in perhaps half a dozen versions here at audible, and each had its virtues, but this one pulls together the story in good accessible sense like no other. At last I can say I grasp the big picture of this central story in US history. The storytelling and editing is disciplined and almost flawless. The anecdotes about various people and scenes are perfectly in service of the larger story. What is heard, is not merely the "what" of the famous moves and turning points, but the "why" for each actor. Suddenly things fit into coherent sequences, more than I have seen, as with the 1873 and 1973 depressions, the interactions of gold, silver and the dollar, the competitive landscape, the phases of the financing and governance of the railroad business, and the major moves by the Vanderbilts, Gould, J. P. Morgan, and other players such as the Knights of Labor.

great book

well read and great book to read on history of the railroads and the robber Barrens responsible for building them or destroying