The saga of a Gilded Age mogul’s rise and fall, inspired by a real historical figure, from the author of An American Tragedy.
Inspired by the life of railway tycoon Charles Tyson Yerkes, these three novels weave a tale of American capitalism in the late nineteenth century. Included in this volume are:
The Financier: Ruthlessly ambitious businessman Frank Cowperwood finds his life derailed by the financial panic of 1873.
The Titan: Cowperwood leaves prison and heads to Chicago to regain his fortune—but his past follows close behind him.
The Stoic: In London, Cowperwood pursues the opportunity to make a fortune from a new underground railway system, while facing hard truths about the life he has lived and the fate that lies ahead.
Praise for the Trilogy of Desire
“An amazingly intricate description of high-rolling 19th-century finance.”—The Wall Street Journal
The Indiana-born Dreiser (1871-1945) has never cut a dashing or romantic swath through American literature. He has no Pulitzer or Nobel Prize to signify his importance. Yet he remains for myriad reasons: his novels are often larger than life, rugged, and defy the norms of conventional morality and organized religion. They are unapologetic in their sexual candor--in fact, outrightly frank--and challenge even modern readers. The brooding force of Dreiser’ s writing casts a dark shadow across American letters. Here in<i>An American Tragedy</i>, Dreiser shows us the flip side of The American Dream in a gathering storm that echoes with all of the power and force of Dostoevsky’ s <i>Crime and Punishment</i>. Inspired by the writings of Balzac and the ideas of Spenser and Freud, Dreiser went on to become one of America’ s best naturalist writers. <i>An American Tragedy</i> is testimony to the strength of Dreiser’ s work: it retains all of its original intensity and force.