Helpful Score: 2
A densely written portrait of the financial machinations of the second half of the 19th century, as American was urbanizing and the age of the robber barons was in full, bull and bear roar. Philadelphia stands in for most of the business activity, and corruption, in the era, and Dreiser presents his financier with a mostly dead-pan, straightforward reporting style that avoids bias, while detailing the manipulations of the markets and the age.
