Titans of Industry: Wealth, Power, and the Making of America

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.

Titans of Industry: Wealth, Power, and the Making of America


They built America.

They nearly broke it.

Their world is back.


In the Gilded Age following the Civil War, Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, and Henry Ford amassed fortunes beyond imagination, crushed competitors, and transformed the United States from a rural republic into an industrial superpower. They funded universities and broke strikes with Pinkerton guns. They gave away libraries and bought legislatures. Hailed as captains of industry and condemned as robber barons, they embodied the American dream—even as they threatened American democracy.


Titans of Industry tells the full story of the men who built industrial America, neither as heroes nor villains, but as complex figures whose achievements and abuses were inseparable. Blending biography with American history, the book traces the rise of railroads, oil, steel, finance, and mass manufacturing, revealing how monopoly power, weak regulation, and brutal labor practices shaped the modern economy.


This is not just history. The wealth inequality and corporate power forged during the Gilded Age have returned. The questions these titans raised—about capitalism, democracy, and who America truly belongs to—remain unanswered.