American Colossus

The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865-1900

By: H. W. Brands

Narrated by: Robertson Dean

In a grand-scale narrative history, the bestselling author of two finalists for the Pulitzer Prize now captures the decades when capitalism was at its most unbridled and a few breathtakingly wealthy businessmen utterly transformed America from an agrarian economy to a world power.

The years between the Civil War and the end of the nineteenth century saw the wholesale transformation of America from a land of small farmers and small businessmen into an industrial giant. Driven by unfathomably wealthy and powerful businessmen like J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, armies of workers, both male and female, were harnessed to a new vision of massive industry. A society rooted in the soil became one based in cities, and legions of immigrants were drawn to American shores. What’s more, in accomplishing its revolution, capitalism threatened to eclipse American democracy. “What do I care about the law?” bellowed Cornelius Vanderbilt. “Hain’t I got the power?” He did, and with it he and the other capitalists reshaped every aspect of American life. In American Colossus, H.W. Brands portrays the emergence, in a remarkably short time, of a recognizably modern America.

The capitalist revolution left not a single area or aspect of American life untouched. It roared across the South, wrenching that region from its feudal past and integrating the southern economy into the national one. It burst over the West, dictating the destruction of Native American economies and peoples, driving the exploitation of natural resources, and making the frontier of settlement a business frontier as well. It crashed across the urban landscape of the East and North, turning cities into engines of wealth and poverty, opulence and squalor. It swamped the politics of an earlier era, capturing one major party and half of the other, inspiring the creation of a third party and determining the issues over which all three waged some of the bitterest battles in American history.

Brands’s spellbinding narrative beautifully depicts the oil gushers of western Pennsylvania, the rise, in Chicago, of the first skyscraper, the exploration of the Colorado River, the cattle drives of the West, and the early passionate sparks of union life. By 1900 the America he portrays is wealthier than ever, yet prosperity is precarious, inequality rampant, and democracy stretched thin. American Colossus is an unforgettable portrait of the years when the contest between capitalism and democracy was at its sharpest, and capitalism triumphed.

Great Narrative History

This is an excellent book. It covers a crucial period in American history, is well written and well-narrated.

content

I wanted to hear more about the Big 5 etc. including Stanford and Colis Huntington.

Great piece balancing capitalism with democracy!

An apolitical book, the author lays out the need to leverage the tools of democracy to remedy the failures of unrestrained capitalism.

Differnt but Interesting

It is definitely a meandering book and fairly different than most history books, in a way I think more historians would dislike. But I felt that that approach served this topic fairly well. A survey covering the growth and change of the American economy during this time period isn't about a war or another easily charted even with a clear beginning and end. I enjoyed the different looks at the North, South and West. The looks at the high and low classes and how politics began to be wrapped up in economics in a way it had never quite had (in the US) before.

I think many are put off but the use of "capitalism" v. "democracy" and I agree that nothing could ever be so simplified (and our system of government, while flawed, is far more democratic now than it was in 1864). But I think in context it works because the point is explaining how this concept of capitalism sort of took over the country. Capitalism wasn't new, of course, but the US did drastically change between 1865 and 1895 and an event like the Civil War was probably more of a byproduct of the change than a cause of it.

It did have its laws. I felt more time could have been spent on certain titans like JP Morgan. And after thorough introduction of the likes of Rockefeller and Carnegie they are sort of dropped for awhile. Part of the meandering narrative is that things do seem to sort of get lost in the fray. But a great many wonderful books have been devoted to those people.

It was an interesting topic. Some parts were better than others. But I really think it is worth it overall.

Compelling narrative marred by ideological bias

Brands conducts meticulous research, chooses illustrative anecdotes well, exhibits sufficient understanding of economics, politics, law, government, and finance, writes well, and creates a fluid and compelling narrative.

The book is corrupted, however, by a pervasive bias against free enterprise. I listened attentively, but I don’t believe Brands ever defines “democracy,” which his narrative frames as the antithesis of capitalism—which he likewise never defines. As far as I can tell, his implicit definition of “democracy” is akin to “democratic socialism”-in other words, authoritarian governmental control of economic activity. That would be a true binary. But there is no true binary between capitalism—free economic activity—and American democracy, with its foundational restraints on governmental interference with freedom.

Tellingly, the only capitalists Brands seems to have heard of are a handful of industrial titans, for he never alludes to the millions upon millions of American capitalists who operated prosperous small businesses during the period treated and built a thriving middle-class.

Throughout the long narrative, one almost hears foreboding music when the word “capitalism” appears, as it only appears in conjunction with negative occurrences and conditions. It is only when you reach the epilogue that Brands, in a grudging CYA passage, acknowledges the extraordinary improvement in the standard of living enjoyed by virtually all Americans in the last third of the 19th century thanks to capitalism. But alas, Brands reverts to form in the last few lines with a cliched allusion to Calvin Coolidge and the breezy unsupported charge that the Great Depression was the product of capitalism.

This could have been a fine book had the author’s ideological blinders not marred it so badly.