Frank Algernon Cowperwood, a bank clerk’s son who learns the laws of life watching a lobster devour a squid, becomes a bold broker in pre-Civil War and Gilded Age Philadelphia. His dealings in city loans with the treasurer Stener, his affair with the daughter of a political boss and the panic after the Chicago fire bring him to trial.
The first novel of Dreiser’s Trilogy of Desire, modelled on the streetcar magnate Charles Yerkes and complete in itself. Download the free EPUB.