A nineteenth-century success manual built from biography. Lewis follows financiers and merchants such as Daniel Drew, Russell Sage, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, A. T. Stewart, John Wanamaker and William E. Dodge from poor beginnings, arguing that self-reliance and character, not luck, explain why some succeed while others fail.
A period piece of Gilded Age self-help, revealing for what it admired as much as for its anecdotes. Download the free EPUB.