Merchant of Power: Sam Insull, Thomas Edison, and the Creation of the Modern Metropolis
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The dramatic tale of the man who created the modern city—and ended up at the center of America's first corporate scandal Publishers Weekly Sam Insull is the forgotten energy tycoon of the early 20th century. As Wasik, a columnist for Bloomberg News, relates, Insull came to America from England in 1881 with $200 in his pocket to be Thomas Edison's private secretary and died in a Paris metro station in 1938 with 84 cents in his pocket. In between, he helped Edison light up New York and moved to Chicago, where he built a corporate empire that raised his personal worth to over $150 million ($1.7 billion in today's dollars); then he lost everything in the Great Depression. The collapse of his companies made him the b te noire of thousands of his now destitute Chicago shareholders and, according to the author, a model for Orson Welles's Citizen Kane. Wasik notes that Insull was instrumental in two fundamental shifts in American history: first, his innovations in the delivery of electric power made possible the consumer age; second, the failure of his financial empire became a basis for the New Deal laws that now govern much of corporate America. Wasik writes well, and Insull is a complex man whose life and times make worthwhile reading. B&w photos. (Mar. 16) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Preface • Introduction • Tireless as the Tides • The Pearl in the Oyster • Crisis & Consolidation • The Wide-Open City • Love & War • A New Kind of Power* All that Jazz • Managing the Spectacle • Attack from All Sides • Abdication & Exile • Facing the Music • In the Fullness of Time
