This book offers a bold new interpretation of American business history at the dawn of big business, 1870 1920.

Maury Klein (B.A. Knox College, M.A., Ph.D. Emory University) has been a professor of history at the University of Rhode Island since 1964, receiving a Doctor of Humanities degree and the Distinguished Alumni Award from Knox College in 2001. Klein has been a Newcomen Fellow at Harvard Business School and held a Mellon Fellowship at Hagley Museum and Library. He has published 13 books and his numerous articles have appeared in Forbes, City, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, American History Illustrated, Sports Illustrated, and Civil War Times Illustrated. Klein has also appeared on documentaries on the BBC and PBS, among other networks.

Prologue: a hothouse for economic growth; 1. The marvel of men and machines; 2. The lure of lovely and lucrative land; 3. The defeat of distance and desolation; 4. The potential of plentiful power; 5. The fabrication of familiar forms; 6. The burden of bargaining with behemoths; 7. The collision of city and country; 8. The mastery of mass markets; Epilogue: the boundaries of big business.