The Great Persuader

The Great Persuader PDF Author: David Lavender
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780870814761
Category : Railroads
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Reprints the 1970 biography (originally published by Doubleday) of a railroad mogul whose family supplied the author with material never before made public. The book explains how Huntington operated, how he accumulated his great fortune, and how his dealings with Standford, Hopkins, Scott, Durrant, Ames and Gould resulted in the creation of a national railroad. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The Great Persuader

The Great Persuader PDF Author: David Lavender
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780870814761
Category : Railroads
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Reprints the 1970 biography (originally published by Doubleday) of a railroad mogul whose family supplied the author with material never before made public. The book explains how Huntington operated, how he accumulated his great fortune, and how his dealings with Standford, Hopkins, Scott, Durrant, Ames and Gould resulted in the creation of a national railroad. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The Art of Wealth

The Art of Wealth PDF Author: Shelley M. Bennett
Publisher: Huntington Library Press
ISBN: 9780873282536
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The Art of Wealth provides a fresh perspective on the complicated mix of public and private motives and models that characterized art collecting and philanthropy in America in the early twentieth-century. The author focuses on four remarkable individuals: Collis Huntington, who started out as a peddler and went on to found a railroad empire; his second wife, Arabella, a woman of great intelligence and taste; her son, Archer, who devoted his life to creating and supporting museums; and Collis's nephew, Henry E. Huntington, who built up an extraordinary foundation and then gave it to the public as an enduring legacy.

Nothing Like It In the World

Nothing Like It In the World PDF Author: Stephen E. Ambrose
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 9780743203173
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
The story of the men who build the transcontinental railroad in the 1860's.

Empire Express

Empire Express PDF Author: David Haward Bain
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101658045
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1432

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Book Description
After the Civil War, the building of the transcontinental railroad was the nineteenth century's most transformative event. Beginning in 1842 with a visionary's dream to span the continent with twin bands of iron, Empire Express captures three dramatic decades in which the United States effectively doubled in size, fought three wars, and began to discover a new national identity. From self--made entrepreneurs such as the Union Pacific's Thomas Durant and era--defining figures such as President Lincoln to the thousands of laborers whose backbreaking work made the railroad possible, this extraordinary narrative summons an astonishing array of voices to give new dimension not only to this epic endeavor but also to the culture, political struggles, and social conflicts of an unforgettable period in American history.

Black Huntington

Black Huntington PDF Author: Cicero M Fain III
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252051432
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
How African Americans thrived in a West Virginia city By 1930, Huntington had become West Virginia's largest city. Its booming economy and relatively tolerant racial climate attracted African Americans from across Appalachia and the South. Prosperity gave these migrants political clout and spurred the formation of communities that defined black Huntington--factors that empowered blacks to confront institutionalized and industrial racism on the one hand and the white embrace of Jim Crow on the other. Cicero M. Fain III illuminates the unique cultural identity and dynamic sense of accomplishment and purpose that transformed African American life in Huntington. Using interviews and untapped archival materials, Fain details the rise and consolidation of the black working class as it pursued, then fulfilled, its aspirations. He also reveals how African Americans developed a host of strategies--strong kin and social networks, institutional development, property ownership, and legal challenges--to defend their gains in the face of the white status quo. Eye-opening and eloquent, Black Huntington makes visible another facet of the African American experience in Appalachia.

Railroaded

Railroaded PDF Author: Richard White
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0393342379
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize "A powerful book, crowded with telling details and shrewd observations." —Michael Kazin, New York Times Book Review The transcontinental railroads were the first corporate behemoths. Their attempts to generate profits from proliferating debt sparked devastating economic panics. Their dependence on public largesse drew them into the corridors of power, initiating new forms of corruption. Their operations rearranged space and time, remade the landscape of the West, and opened new ways of life and work. Their discriminatory rates sparked a new antimonopoly politics. The transcontinentals were pivotal actors in the making of modern America, but the triumphal myths of the golden spike, Robber Barons larger than life, and an innovative capitalism all die here. Instead we have a new vision of the Gilded Age, often darkly funny, that shows history to be rooted in failure as well as success.

Carleton Watkins

Carleton Watkins PDF Author: Tyler Green
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520377532
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 594

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Book Description
"[A] fascinating and indispensable book."—Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times Best Books of 2018—The Guardian Gold Medal for Contribution to Publishing, 2018 California Book Awards Carleton Watkins (1829–1916) is widely considered the greatest American photographer of the nineteenth century and arguably the most influential artist of his era. He is best known for his pictures of Yosemite Valley and the nearby Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias. Watkins made his first trip to Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove in 1861 just as the Civil War was beginning. His photographs of Yosemite were exhibited in New York for the first time in 1862, as news of the Union’s disastrous defeat at Fredericksburg was landing in newspapers and while the Matthew Brady Studio’s horrific photographs of Antietam were on view. Watkins’s work tied the West to Northern cultural traditions and played a key role in pledging the once-wavering West to Union. Motivated by Watkins’s pictures, Congress would pass legislation, signed by Abraham Lincoln, that preserved Yosemite as the prototypical “national park,” the first such act of landscape preservation in the world. Carleton Watkins: Making the West American includes the first history of the birth of the national park concept since pioneering environmental historian Hans Huth’s landmark 1948 “Yosemite: The Story of an Idea.” Watkins’s photographs helped shape America’s idea of the West, and helped make the West a full participant in the nation. His pictures of California, Oregon, and Nevada, as well as modern-day Washington, Utah, and Arizona, not only introduced entire landscapes to America but were important to the development of American business, finance, agriculture, government policy, and science. Watkins’s clients, customers, and friends were a veritable “who’s who” of America’s Gilded Age, and his connections with notable figures such as Collis P. Huntington, John and Jessie Benton Frémont, Eadweard Muybridge, Frederick Billings, John Muir, Albert Bierstadt, and Asa Gray reveal how the Gilded Age helped make today’s America. Drawing on recent scholarship and fresh archival discoveries, Tyler Green reveals how an artist didn’t just reflect his time, but acted as an agent of influence. This telling of Watkins’s story will fascinate anyone interested in American history; the West; and how art and artists impacted the development of American ideas, industry, landscape, conservation, and politics.

Manufacturing the Modern Patron in Victorian California

Manufacturing the Modern Patron in Victorian California PDF Author: John Ott
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135155929X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
Through the example of Central Pacific Railroad executives, Manufacturing the Modern Patron in Victorian California redirects attention from the usual art historical protagonists - artistic producers - and rewrites narratives of American art from the unfamiliar vantage of patrons and collectors. Neither denouncing, nor lionizing, nor dismissing its subjects, it demonstrates the benefits of taking art consumers seriously as active contributors to the cultural meanings of artwork. It explores the critical role of art patronage in the articulation of a new and distinctly modern elite class identity for newly ascendant corporate executives and financiers. These economic elites also sought to legitimate trends in industrial capitalism, such as mechanization, incorporation, and proletarianization, through their consumption of a diverse array of elite culture, including regional landscapes, panoramic and stop-motion photography, history paintings of the California Gold Rush, the architecture of Stanford University, and the design of domestic galleries. This book addresses not only readers in the art history and visual and material cultures of the United States, but also scholars of patronage studies, American Studies, and the sociology of culture. It tells a story still relevant to this new Gilded Age of the early 21st century, in which wealthy collectors dramatically shape contemporary art markets and institutions.

American Disruptor

American Disruptor PDF Author: Roland De Wolk
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520383230
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
The rags-to-riches story of Silicon Valley's original disruptor. American Disruptor is the untold story of Leland Stanford – from his birth in a backwoods bar to the founding of the world-class university that became and remains the nucleus of Silicon Valley. The life of this robber baron, politician, and historic influencer is the astonishing tale of how one supremely ambitious man became this country's original "disruptor" – reshaping industry and engineering one of the greatest raids on the public treasury for America’s transcontinental railroad, all while living more opulently than maharajas, kings, and emperors. It is also the saga of how Stanford, once a serial failure, overcame all obstacles to become one of America’s most powerful and wealthiest men, using his high elective office to enrich himself before losing the one thing that mattered most to him—his only child and son. Scandal and intrigue would follow Stanford through his life, and even after his death, when his widow was murdered in a Honolulu hotel—a crime quickly covered up by the almost stillborn university she had saved. Richly detailed and deeply researched, American Disruptor restores Leland Stanford’s rightful place as a revolutionary force and architect of modern America.

Civil War America, 1850 To 1875

Civil War America, 1850 To 1875 PDF Author: Richard F. Selcer
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
ISBN: 1438107978
Category : Almanacs, American
Languages : en
Pages : 561

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Book Description
Features essays, statistical data, period photographs, maps, and documents.