Before there was a Trump or a Rockefeller, there was Wedgwood. Wedgwood pottery, with its familiar white classical figures against a pale-blue background, has been one of the most recognizable luxury brand names in the world for more than two hundred years. In this lively, authoritative biography, Brian Dolan shows us how a crippled, disenfranchised child grew to become the first tycoon, and, as the inventor of the eponymous brand name, the father of our label-obsessed culture. His is the Enlightenment's supreme success story. Born into an impoverished potter's family in Staffordshire, England, Josiah Wedgwood began life with dim prospects. He had scant education, and a bout with smallpox left him with a lame leg. But while he was apprenticed to his hapless elder brother, his natural curiosity and ambition led him to conduct a series of rigorous chemical experiments in the hope of discovering a pure white glaze then unattainable in Europe. He moved on, and up, cleverly cultivating patr

From the Publisher: A gripping, groundbreaking biography of the combative man whose genius and force of will created modern capitalism. Founder of a dynasty, builder of the original Grand Central, creator of an impossibly vast fortune, Cornelius "Commodore" Vanderbilt is an American icon. Humbly born on Staten Island during George Washington's presidency, he rose from boatman to builder of the nation's largest fleet of steamships to lord of a railroad empire. Lincoln consulted him on steamship strategy during the Civil War; Jay Gould was first his uneasy ally and then sworn enemy; and Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president of the United States, was his spiritual counselor. We see Vanderbilt help to launch the transportation revolution, propel the Gold Rush, reshape Manhattan, and invent the modern corporation-in fact, as T.J. Stiles elegantly argues, Vanderbilt did more than perhaps any other individual to create the economic world we live in today. In The First Tycoon

A biography of the combative man whose genius and force of will created modern capitalism, documenting how Vanderbilt helped launch the transportation revolution, propel the Gold Rush, reshape Manhattan, and invent the modern corporation.

Donated by Philip Kenedy.