Table of contents : The rise of the moguls. Speculation as martial art -- One nation under rails -- The first triumvirate -- Toil and trouble -- Frontiers of enterprise. The conquest of the South -- Lakota's last stand -- Profits on the hoof -- To make the desert bloom -- Gotham and Gomorrah. The teeming shore -- Cities of the plain -- Below the El -- The finest government money can buy. School for scandal -- The spirit of '76 -- Lives of the parties -- Capital improvements -- The decade of the century. Meet Jim Crow -- Affairs of the heartland -- The wages of capitalism -- Tariff bill and dollar mark -- Imperial dreams -- The apotheosis of Pierpont Morgan -- Epilogue: the democratic counterrevolution.