"From Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Hiltzik, the epic tale of the clash for supremacy between America's 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, America's railways exploded into a titanic industry helmed by a pageant of speculators, crooks, and visionaries. Hiltzik shows how 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. -- adapted from jacket. Provided by publisher.

Introduction: Agents of transformation -- The age of scoundrels. Uncle Daniel and the Commodore ; Chapters of Erie ; Pierpont Morgan's grand tour ; The king of frauds ; The Northern Pacific panic ; Jay Gould returns ; Year of upheaval -- Morgan and Harriman. The rise of Ned Harriman ; The first skirmish ; A community of interests ; Savior of the Union Pacific ; The Reconstruction ; "A pig-headed affair" ; The empire builder ; The quest for the Burlington -- The ghost dance. Peacock Alley ; Lions guarding the way ; "A good-sized panic" ; Exhaustion ; The trustbuster ; "Malefactors of great wealth" -- Epilogue: The end of an epoch.