Out of a Philadelphia penitentiary and newly rich again, Frank Algernon Cowperwood moves west to booming Chicago with Aileen, now his wife. He fights his way into the city’s gas and street-railway franchises, buys and battles aldermen and bankers, and pursues one woman after another while respectable Chicago closes ranks against him.
The second novel of Dreiser’s trilogy of desire, modelled on the tycoon Charles Yerkes, and a landmark of American naturalism. Download the free EPUB.