Greed in the Gilded Age

Greed in the Gilded Age PDF Author: William Elliott Hazelgrove
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538142910
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
Greed in the Gilded Age is a Gatsby-esque tale of mystery, money, sex, and scandal. ‘Millionaire’ had just entered the American lexicon and Cassie Chadwick was front page news, becoming a media sensation before mass media, even eclipsing President Roosevelt’s inauguration. Using these newspaper articles, Hazelgrove tells the story of one of the greatest cons in American history. Combining the sexuality and helplessness her gender implied, Chadwick conned at least 2 million dollars, equivalent to about 60 million today, simply by claiming to be the illegitimate daughter and heir of steel titan, Andrew Carnegie. Playing to their greed, she was able to convince highly educated financiers to loan hundreds of thousands of dollars, on nothing more than a rumor and her word. She was a product of her time and painting her as a criminal is only one way to look at it. Those times rewarded someone who was smart, inventive, bold, and aggressive. She was able to break through boundaries of class, education, and gender, to beat the men of the one percent at their own game.

Greed in the Gilded Age

Greed in the Gilded Age PDF Author: William Elliott Hazelgrove
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538142910
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
Greed in the Gilded Age is a Gatsby-esque tale of mystery, money, sex, and scandal. ‘Millionaire’ had just entered the American lexicon and Cassie Chadwick was front page news, becoming a media sensation before mass media, even eclipsing President Roosevelt’s inauguration. Using these newspaper articles, Hazelgrove tells the story of one of the greatest cons in American history. Combining the sexuality and helplessness her gender implied, Chadwick conned at least 2 million dollars, equivalent to about 60 million today, simply by claiming to be the illegitimate daughter and heir of steel titan, Andrew Carnegie. Playing to their greed, she was able to convince highly educated financiers to loan hundreds of thousands of dollars, on nothing more than a rumor and her word. She was a product of her time and painting her as a criminal is only one way to look at it. Those times rewarded someone who was smart, inventive, bold, and aggressive. She was able to break through boundaries of class, education, and gender, to beat the men of the one percent at their own game.

Gilded Greed

Gilded Greed PDF Author: Kathryn Callahan
Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing
ISBN: 9781457502385
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
Gilded Greed is a story of corruption, revenge and desire during one of the most divisive political debates of the Gilded Age--the renewal of the Louisiana Lottery in 1891-1892. The stakes are high. The Lottery Company wields significant political power through its ill-gotten profits. Opposition erupts, threatening to derail the lottery, an unacceptable financial set-back. Desperation and growing tensions define those key characters as they embark on personal journeys of discovery and revenge; romantic liaisons that clash against the cultural divides; illegal activities that prey on the desperate and vulnerable; and acts of violent reprisals in a struggle that transcends the business of the lottery itself. Revealed are the darkest secrets of the Gilded Age in New Orleans--gambling, corruption, violence, prostitution, procurement, even Voodoo. The streets of the French Quarter are already 175 years old. The rot and ruin of this old center only adds to the contrasts of the times, that Gilded Age. The story is replete with vividly drawn characters--those that embody the new wealth and power of that time, those who live at the lowest end of human misery, and all who toil in between. Kathryn Callahan is both a former insurance executive and award-winning bed and breakfast innkeeper on Cape Cod. An avid recreational historian, this first novel is the culmination of a fascination with New Orleans that began in 1981 and continues to this day. She's visited this unique American city more than thirty times. She's walked its streets, both the boisterous and the less-traveled, becoming intimately knowledgeable about the buildings and locations referenced in her novel. Beginning new chapters in her life is not new, nor without successful precedence. After thirty years in insurance, she followed her dream to own and operate a bed and breakfast inn. Now, with publication of Gilded Greed, she continues her journey along that creative road that has been instrumental to her success as a corporate executive, an entrepreneur and now as an author of historical fiction. Callahan resides in historic Plymouth, Massachusetts. Visit the author's website at www.KathrynCallahan.com

Von

Von PDF Author: Richard Koszarski
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN: 0879109548
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 407

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Book Description
As a revised edition of Koszarski's The Man You Loved to Hate, this biography takes into account information unearthed by researchers in France and Austria that had previously been ignored. This material enables the biography to bring the pioneering film director into sharper focus.

Illegal Tender

Illegal Tender PDF Author: David Tripp
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439100292
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1030

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Book Description
It's the most valuable ounce of gold in the world, the celebrated, the fabled, the infamous 1933 double eagle, illegal to own and coveted all the more, sought with passion by men of wealth and with steely persistence by the United States government for more than a half century—it shouldn't even exist but it does, and its astonishing, true adventures read like "a composite of The Lord of the Rings and The Maltese Falcon" (The New York Times). In 1905, at the height of the exuberant Gilded Age, President Theodore Roosevelt commissioned America's greatest sculptor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens—as he battled in vain for his life—to create what became America's most beautiful coin. In 1933 the hopes of America dimmed in the darkness of the Great Depression, and gold—the nation's lifeblood—hemorrhaged from the financial system. As the economy teetered on the brink of total collapse, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his first act as president, assumed wartime powers while the nation was at peace and in a "swift, staccato action" unprecedented in United States history recalled all gold and banned its private ownership. But the United States Mint continued, quite legally, to strike nearly a half million 1933 double eagles that were never issued and were deemed illegal to own. In 1937, along with countless millions of other gold coins, they were melted down into faceless gold bars and sent to Fort Knox. The government thought they had destroyed them all—but they were wrong. A few escaped, purloined in a crime—an inside job—that wasn't discovered until 1944. Then, the fugitive 1933 double eagles became the focus of a relentless Secret Service investigation spearheaded by the man who had put away Al Capone. All the coins that could be found were seized and destroyed. But one was beyond their reach, in a king's collection in Egypt, where it survived a world war, a revolution, and a coup, only to be lost again. In 1996, more than forty years later, in a dramatic sting operation set up by a Secret Service informant at the Waldorf-Astoria, an English and an American coin dealer were arrested with a 1933 double eagle which, after years of litigation, was sold in July 2002 to an anonymous buyer for more than $7.5 million in a record-shattering auction. But was it the only one? The lost one? Illegal Tender, revealing information available for the first time, tells a riveting tale of American history, liberally spiced with greed, intrigue, deception, and controversy as it follows the once secret odyssey of this fabulous golden object through the decades. With its cast of kings, presidents, government agents, shadowy dealers, and crooks, Illegal Tender will keep readers guessing about this incomparable disk of gold—the coin that shouldn't be and almost wasn't—until the very end.

The Bushman’s Lair

The Bushman’s Lair PDF Author: Paul McKendrick
Publisher: Harbour Publishing
ISBN: 1550179233
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
Some of Western Canada’s most enduring legends involve wilderness fugitives like the Mad Trapper of Rat River or Gunanoot of the Skeena. This book is about one of the most mysterious and most recent fugitives, the Bushman of the Shuswap, who made national headlines while on the lam in the wilderness around Shuswap Lake during the turn of the millennium. For several years he played cat and mouse with the RCMP, raiding summer cottages for supplies and giving media interviews at the edge of the bush only to vanish like smoke. Who was the mysterious Bushman? What drove him? What happened to him? Author Paul McKendrick became obsessed with these questions after a group of houseboaters discovered a doorway built into a rocky outcrop above a remote arm of Shuswap Lake. It opened into an elaborately excavated nine-hundred-square-foot home, complete with electricity and other amenities—the Bushman’s long-sought hideout. Intrigued by the ingenuity of the fugitive’s lair and sensing that there was more to the story than what had been reported by the media, McKendrick began reaching out to people who knew the man, whose real name was John Bjornstrom. What had driven Bjornstrom to go on the lam in the first place, and why specifically to the Shuswap? Why did he escape from prison shortly before completing his sentence? The Bushman’s Lair is the culmination of numerous interviews, court and RCMP transcripts and McKendrick’s own experience of following the Bushman’s trails. The stranger-than-fiction story that McKendrick has woven together is as full of twists and surprises as any reader could hope for: a child of Romani refugees raised by outdoor enthusiasts from Norway; a bizarre, top-secret US military program that recruited individuals with supposed psychic abilities; conspiracy theories and entanglements with shady characters; an alleged hit list tied to the infamous Bre-X mining scandal; and more. Reminiscent of John Vaillant's The Golden Spruce and Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, this fascinating portrait of a far-from-ordinary fugitive makes for a page-turning read.

Gilded

Gilded PDF Author: Deborah Davis
Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
ISBN: 0470730242
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
A beautifully written history of high society in Newport, Rhode Island, from the acclaimed author of Party of the Century Newport is the legendary and beautiful home of American aristocracy and the sheltered super-rich. Many of the country's most famous blueblood families?the closest thing we have to royalty?have lived and summered in Newport since the nineteenth century. The Astors, the Vanderbilts, Edith Wharton, JFK and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Doris Duke, and Claus and Sunny von Bulow are just a few of the many names who have called the city home. Gilded takes you along as you explore the fascinating heritage of the Newport elite, from its first colonists to the newest of its new millennium millionaires, showing the evolution of a town intent on living in its own world. Through a narrative filled with engrossing characters and lively tales of untold extravagance, Davis brings the resort to life and uncovers the difference between rich and Newport rich along the way. An engrossing multigenerational saga that tells the real story of the rich and famous in Newport Vibrant, praiseworthy writing: "[Davis] brings splendidly colorful behind-the-scenes action and players up front" (the New York Times on Party of the Century) 34 evocative black-and-white photographs Written with insight and dramatic flair, Gilded gives you a rare peek into the cloistered coastal playground of America's moneyed elite.

The lion's share

The lion's share PDF Author: Octave Thanet
Publisher: Good Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
"The lion's share" by Octave Thanet. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

Diamonds and Deadlines

Diamonds and Deadlines PDF Author: Betsy Prioleau
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1468314513
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Book Description
Betsy Prioleau’s biography of Gilded Age female tycoon Miriam Leslie is “an appropriately twisty tale of someone trying to outrun her origins. . . . Her story sparkles, as intoxicating as a champagne fountain that somebody else is paying for” (New York Times Book Review). Among the fabled tycoons of the Gilded Age—Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt—is a forgotten figure: Mrs. Frank Leslie. For 20 years she ran the country’s largest publishing company, Frank Leslie Publishing, which chronicled postbellum America in dozens of weeklies and monthlies. A pioneer in an all-male industry, she made a fortune and became a national celebrity and tastemaker in the process. But Miriam Leslie was also a byword for scandal: she flouted feminine convention, took lovers, married four times, and harbored unsavory secrets that she concealed through a skein of lies and multiple personas. Both during and after her lifetime, glimpses of the truth emerged, including an illegitimate birth and a checkered youth. Diamonds and Deadlines reveals the previously unknown, sensational life of the brilliant and brazen “empress of journalism,” who dropped a bombshell at her death: she left her entire multimillion-dollar estate to women’s suffrage—a never-equaled amount that guaranteed passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. In this dazzling biography, cultural historian Betsy Prioleau draws from diaries, genealogies, and published works to provide an intimate look at the life of one of the Gilded Age’s most complex, powerful women and unexpected feminist icons. Ultimately, Diamonds and Deadlines restores Mrs. Frank Leslie to her rightful place in history as a monumental businesswoman who presaged the feminist future and reflected, in bold relief, the Gilded Age, one of the most momentous, seismic, and vivid epochs in American history. Includes Black-and-White Images

On Corruption in America

On Corruption in America PDF Author: Sarah Chayes
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0525654860
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
From the prizewinning journalist and internationally recognized expert on corruption in government networks throughout the world comes a major work that looks homeward to America, exploring the insidious, dangerous networks of corruption of our past, present, and precarious future. “If you want to save America, this might just be the most important book to read now." —Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains Sarah Chayes writes in her new book, that the United States is showing signs similar to some of the most corrupt countries in the world. Corruption, she argues, is an operating system of sophisticated networks in which government officials, key private-sector interests, and out-and-out criminals interweave. Their main objective: not to serve the public but to maximize returns for network members. In this unflinching exploration of corruption in America, Chayes exposes how corruption has thrived within our borders, from the titans of America's Gilded Age (Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, et al.) to the collapse of the stock market in 1929, the Great Depression, and FDR's New Deal; from Joe Kennedy's years of banking, bootlegging, machine politics, and pursuit of infinite wealth to the deregulation of the Reagan Revolution--undermining this nation's proud middle class and union members. She then brings us up to the present as she shines a light on the Clinton policies of political favors and personal enrichment and documents Trump's hydra-headed network of corruption, which aimed to systematically undo the Constitution and our laws. Ultimately and most importantly, Chayes reveals how corrupt systems are organized, how they enable bad actors to bend the rules so their crimes are covered legally, how they overtly determine the shape of our government, and how they affect all levels of society, especially when the corruption is overlooked and downplayed by the rich and well-educated.

The Republic for Which It Stands

The Republic for Which It Stands PDF Author: Richard White
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190619074
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 964

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Book Description
The Oxford History of the United States is the most respected multivolume history of the American nation. In the newest volume in the series, The Republic for Which It Stands, acclaimed historian Richard White offers a fresh and integrated interpretation of Reconstruction and the Gilded Age as the seedbed of modern America. At the end of the Civil War the leaders and citizens of the victorious North envisioned the country's future as a free-labor republic, with a homogenous citizenry, both black and white. The South and West were to be reconstructed in the image of the North. Thirty years later Americans occupied an unimagined world. The unity that the Civil War supposedly secured had proved ephemeral. The country was larger, richer, and more extensive, but also more diverse. Life spans were shorter, and physical well-being had diminished, due to disease and hazardous working conditions. Independent producers had become wage earners. The country was Catholic and Jewish as well as Protestant, and increasingly urban and industrial. The "dangerous" classes of the very rich and poor expanded, and deep differences -- ethnic, racial, religious, economic, and political -- divided society. The corruption that gave the Gilded Age its name was pervasive. These challenges also brought vigorous efforts to secure economic, moral, and cultural reforms. Real change -- technological, cultural, and political -- proliferated from below more than emerging from political leadership. Americans, mining their own traditions and borrowing ideas, produced creative possibilities for overcoming the crises that threatened their country. In a work as dramatic and colorful as the era it covers, White narrates the conflicts and paradoxes of these decades of disorienting change and mounting unrest, out of which emerged a modern nation whose characteristics resonate with the present day.