American Colossus

Brands (Dickson Allen Anderson Professor of History, Univ. of Texas-Austin; Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt) here argues that the capitalist revolution of the mid- to late 19th century was perhaps the best thing that could happen to the American people, albeit at a cost. Individuals such as Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, J. Pierpont Morgan, and John D. Rockefeller provided the means to win the Civil War, bind the nation together with railroads, begin larger-scale agriculture in the plains, increase industrial production, and enlarge the country's population through massive immigration from both Europe and Asia. Brands also shows that American capitalism corrupted local, state, and federal government, built a financial system that swung between boom and bust, drastically reduced the Native American population, and established Jim Crow segregation in the South, while also creating a working environment that brought forth the union and populist movements.