• American Colossus

  • The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865-1900
  • By: H. W. Brands
  • Narrated by: Robertson Dean
  • Length: 23 hrs and 29 mins
  • 4.2 out of 5 stars (276 ratings)

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American Colossus

By: H. W. Brands
Narrated by: Robertson Dean
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Publisher's summary

In a grand-scale narrative history, the bestselling author of two finalists for the Pulitzer Prize now captures the decades when capitalism was at its most unbridled and a few breathtakingly wealthy businessmen utterly transformed America from an agrarian economy to a world power. The years between the Civil War and the end of the nineteenth century saw the wholesale transformation of America from a land of small farmers and small businessmen into an industrial giant. Driven by unfathomably wealthy and powerful businessmen like J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, armies of workers, both male and female, were harnessed to a new vision of massive industry. A society rooted in the soil became one based in cities, and legions of immigrants were drawn to American shores. What’s more, in accomplishing its revolution, capitalism threatened to eclipse American democracy. “What do I care about the law?” bellowed Cornelius Vanderbilt. “Hain’t I got the power?” He did, and with it he and the other capitalists reshaped every aspect of American life. In American Colossus, H.W. Brands portrays the emergence, in a remarkably short time, of a recognizably modern America. The capitalist revolution left not a single area or aspect of American life untouched. It roared across the South, wrenching that region from its feudal past and integrating the southern economy into the national one. It burst over the West, dictating the destruction of Native American economies and peoples, driving the exploitation of natural resources, and making the frontier of settlement a business frontier as well. It crashed across the urban landscape of the East and North, turning cities into engines of wealth and poverty, opulence and squalor. It swamped the politics of an earlier era, capturing one major party and half of the other, inspiring the creation of a third party and determining the issues over which all three waged some of the bitterest battles in American history. Brands’s spellbinding narrative beautifully depicts the oil gushers of western Pennsylvania, the rise, in Chicago, of the first skyscraper, the exploration of the Colorado River, the cattle drives of the West, and the early passionate sparks of union life. By 1900 the America he portrays is wealthier than ever, yet prosperity is precarious, inequality rampant, and democracy stretched thin. American Colossus is an unforgettable portrait of the years when the contest between capitalism and democracy was at its sharpest, and capitalism triumphed.

©2010 H.W. Brands (P)2010 Random House Audio
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History

Critic reviews

"Effectively, excerpts from the first-person accounts of Booker T. Washington, Black Elk, Jacob Riis, and others convey the drama of the time.... [A] fast-paced, engrossing narrative." (Publishers Weekly)

"Mr. Brands, a terrific writer who commands his material, handles this sprawling, complicated story with authority and panache. A book that might have been a worthy but boring tome turns out to be as close as serious history gets to a page turner....American Colossus is a first-rate overview of one of the most important periods in American history, one without which the American Century could not have happened." (John Steele Gordon, The New York Times)

"A great story . . . Serves up everything you might expect in a ripping yarn: murderous duels, savage Indian raids, equally savage counterattacks.”—Washington Post Book World“Old Hickory rides again in Brands’ elegantly written and carefully researched biography . . . A must-read!” (Douglas Brinkley, author of The Great Deluge, winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award)

Featured Article: The Gilded Age in History and Fiction


While fans of Julian Fellowes’s Gilded Age may be gagging on the luxurious costumes and sumptuous sets, part of the fun is sorting out fact from fiction in the HBO period drama. With a mix of invented characters and actual historical figures—such as society queen Caroline Astor and African American newspaper editor and civil rights leader T. Thomas Fortune—enthusiasts have plenty of resources available so they can learn the truth about the extravagant era when wealthy railroad magnates and other arrivistes were upending late 19th-century New York City society and culture.

What listeners say about American Colossus

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

8 Thoughts on 'American Colossus'

1. Maybe the best way to understand the first third of the 21st century is to learn about the last third of the 19th.

2. Is the Internet more or less consequential than the trans-continental railroad, the transatlantic telegraph table and Bell's invention of the telephone? Is our new post-industrial way of organizing work as big a change as the transition to the industrial organization of labor?

3. Would someone living in 1910, who was born in 1869, have experienced more or less change than someone born in 1969 and alive today? (Like me).

4. American Colossus is long - 23 hours and 33 minutes (624 pages). Took 3 kids' soccer games, one college hockey game, two weekends of yard work, a basement clean-out, and various runs, dish washing/laundry folding sessions, and about 10 commutes to finish. Multitasking is the only way (at least for me) that a book as colossal as Colossus gets finished.

5. Rockefeller (oil), Carnegie (steel), Vanderbilt (railroads), Morgan (money, finance) - it is these men who created our foundational industries. Brands' thesis is that capitalism and democracy are always in tension, that the concentration of capital necessarily requires the erosion of democratic ideals.

6. It's possible that one reason I enjoyed American Colossus so much is that if is performed by Roberston Dean, my favorite Audible narrator. Anybody who questions the quality of an audiobook experience should spend some time with Roberston Dean.

7. Part of the reason I love to read history is that it takes me so many damn times to get all the facts straight in my head. I have this "5 times" rule. I need to read about something 5 times before it begins to stick. Only after about 5 books on the brain, or 5 books on behavioral economics, or 5 books on the on the 19th century do things start to come together.

8. American Colossus is a great companion piece to Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life, as the both cover about the same time period but from opposite vantage points. Bryson explains the impact of the agrarian to industrial transition from the perspective of the home and its residents, Brands from the personalities and big events that drove this great transition.

What books on the past are necessary to understand the future?

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61 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Very good, not quite great.

This was my third H.W. Brands book, and I'm becoming a fan of his work. He does a great job of telling history via interesting storylines. I had just finished Battle Cry Of Freedom, and the Oxford US History Series doesn't yet have a volume about this period. I read somewhere that this book was originally going to be that book. I don't know if that's true, but American Colossus is certainly of equal quality to the other Oxford books. The Age Of Gold was a more engaging H.W. Brands book to me, but American Colossus is on a similar level.

The reviewer who argued that Professor Brands doesn't understand economics might make a correct point technically, but is denying the fundamental truth in the narrative. Democracy is the rule of the people, one vote for each person. In a prominently capitalist economy, the owners of industry hold far more power than one vote could get them. Brands Illustrates how this period, more than any before it in America, saw that balance of power swing strongly in favor of the prominant capitalists of the day. Brands does not take sides in this struggle, however. He merely shows how this shaped the America we live in today.

I think he tends to treat American presidents kindly, and this seems to be the case in his treatment of Grover Cleveland. His biography of Andrew Jackson also played things fairly safe.

Overall, a very enjoyable read and an excellent addition to an American history buff's collection.

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11 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

The mismeasure of of an economic system.

Firstly, this was an interesting read. The research and narrative style made this title entertaining and informative. I love American history and the period covered here is one of the most exciting. That said, this book suffers from several fatal flaws.

The most serious problem is that the author misunderstands capitalism (I have read Wealth of Nations and every other title on economic systems available on audible, as well as others). I can say definitively this author has not, or has not understood them. This is evident from the first paragraph where the author pits capitalism as an incompatible antagonist to liberty. Sad considering the subject matter here.

Another issue with this book is that it is a bit disjointed. There is not strict adherence to chronology, which will likely be confusing to the casual reader and is a distraction in a history book. The vignettes are rather large and the transitions between them are sometimes disjointed. The scale of content, from fine details to large overview, is constantly changing in order to suit the perspective and conclusions the author wishes to impute.

Lastly, a number of sections seem to have absolutely nothing to do with capitalism.

In summary, if you love American history as much as I do, this book is probably worth a listen. But Brands quickly proves he is a competent (not outstanding) historian, not an economist. The book has the feel of a rough draft and suffers in comparison to works of master storytellers like Ambrose, Shirer or McCullough. Nevertheless, the content is intersting and the rendition is better than many.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Disappointed

I was excited to see a book about the economic history of the US in the late 1800s but was disappointed when I listened to this book. So many books look at military or political history and to finally see a book about US economic history seemed long overdue. The book didn't proceed logically to me, in my mind the author rambled quite a bit. One minute you are listening to the Battle of the LIttle Bighorn and then the next you're listening to a story about the great Chicago fire. There is a definite political spin to this novel. For example the military campaigns agains the Indians in the 1800's are a subsidy to big corporations. On a positive note, the author includes many quotations from diaries, letters, and news articles which added a human touch that gave real insight into the thoughts and worries of the times.

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9 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Strong narrative

With his usual narrative drive and extensive quotations from participants, HW Brands gives a portrait of the Gilded Age and the rise of the robber barons. Democracy and capitalism are usually described as apples and oranges — one a political system, the other economic — but Brands draws them in sharp opposition. He shows beyond question the way that free-range capitalism makes a mockery of democratic government.

As an overall history of the age, it’s lacking. Reconstruction is barely mentioned, and when it comes up, the focus is mainly on the effect of reconstruction policies on money. Most cultural trends are ignored. He misses a golden opportunity by severely limiting his references to Mark Twain: Twain was a perfect embodiment of the age, and nearly died on the shoals of capitalist envy. But he appears here mainly as the man who gave the Gilded Age its name.

Brands also steers clear of atrocities. Capitalism’s war on labor is described in exciting detail, but the far greater evil of white southerners’ war on freed slaves is only briefly touched on. In describing America’s imperialism of the 1890s, he includes only a brief mention of the atrocities committed by American troops in the Philippines. It was this very crime that turned Mark Twain from a self-satisfied expansionist into an angry and bitter opponent of imperialism.

But within the terms he’s set for himself, Brands makes his case. The robber barons — Carnegie, Rockefeller, Morgan — are all here; so are the champions of labor — Eugene Debs, Henry George, Coxey’s Army. And Teddy Roosevelt, imperialist AND trust-buster, cuts an imposing figure in the later chapters. While giving capitalism credit for some of the gains in living standards enjoyed by Americans, there’s not much doubt that his overall sympathies are on the side of labor.

It’s a pleasure to hear all this related in Robertson Dean’s smooth, deep voice. Once I got into it, I had trouble putting the audiobook down.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Not Fair to the Word Capitalism

Brands obviously disdains the way business was done in this era, but I think he misses the mark in his use of the word capitalism. He makes no distinction between Gilded Age crony capitalism and free markets. He is rightfully hard on the former, while observing no difference between it and the latter. The recounting of events is solid history. I just wish Brands would not lump this era of government-created monopolies with capitalism writ large.

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4 people found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
  • AR
  • 07-01-15

Exciting Period of History Deserves Better Author

I chose this book because I wanted a history of the U.S. between the Civil War and the modern age (ca. 1920). Surprisingly, there isn't much to choose from. I'm eagerly awaiting the book covering this period in the Oxford Univ. Press History of the U.S. series, but I have no idea when it's going to be published.

This book tells you what happened, but not much else. H.W. Brands is a prolific author of American history of many periods, from the early years of the republic to Reagan. He's an academic, but I don't know what his specialty is--to judge by his output, he doesn't have one. And that may be the problem.

American Colossus struck me as both superficial and quirky. Brands just doesn't have a very interesting mind, and his take on events is never striking. What he has to say never made me think. The way he looks at the rapidly changing American society of the period is also idiosyncratic. He discusses gays, for instance, but not women and the rise of feminism and the suffragist movement. Often he just disappoints, as in his discussion of immigration.

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3 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
  • NK
  • 01-21-14

American Colossus

The presentation was well done. The story covers more of the political nature of the period rather the business side. If you tuned to that aspect you'll enjoy the book. If you're not then you may be disappointed.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Differnt but Interesting

It is definitely a meandering book and fairly different than most history books, in a way I think more historians would dislike. But I felt that that approach served this topic fairly well. A survey covering the growth and change of the American economy during this time period isn't about a war or another easily charted even with a clear beginning and end. I enjoyed the different looks at the North, South and West. The looks at the high and low classes and how politics began to be wrapped up in economics in a way it had never quite had (in the US) before.

I think many are put off but the use of "capitalism" v. "democracy" and I agree that nothing could ever be so simplified (and our system of government, while flawed, is far more democratic now than it was in 1864). But I think in context it works because the point is explaining how this concept of capitalism sort of took over the country. Capitalism wasn't new, of course, but the US did drastically change between 1865 and 1895 and an event like the Civil War was probably more of a byproduct of the change than a cause of it.

It did have its laws. I felt more time could have been spent on certain titans like JP Morgan. And after thorough introduction of the likes of Rockefeller and Carnegie they are sort of dropped for awhile. Part of the meandering narrative is that things do seem to sort of get lost in the fray. But a great many wonderful books have been devoted to those people.

It was an interesting topic. Some parts were better than others. But I really think it is worth it overall.

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

not even about captialosm

it's not even about capitalism good book but some what of a miss leading title.

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2 people found this helpful