The Associates: Four Capitalists Who Created California

by Richard Rayner

A true-life tale of ruthless ambition, staggering greed, and the making of a nation. One hundred forty years ago, four men rose from their position as middle-class merchants in Sacramento, California, to become the force behind the transcontinental railroad. In the course of doing so, they became wealthy beyond any measure––and to sustain their power, they lied, bribed, wheedled, and, when necessary, arranged for obstacles, both human and legal, to disappear. Their names were Collis Huntington, Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins, and they were known as “The Big Four” or “The Associates.” Their drive for money––nothing more, nothing less––was epic. Their legacy is a university, public gardens, museums, mansions, banks, and libraries––and to a large degree California itself, a state that even today owes its aura of “can-do” and limitless possibilities to "The Associates."

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Business, Politics, Biography, Historical

223 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Richard Rayner is a British author who now lives in Los Angeles. He was born on December 15, 1955 in the northern city of Bradford. Rayner attended schools in Yorkshire and Wales before studying philosophy and law at the University of Cambridge. He has worked as an editor at Time Out Magazine, in London, and later on the literary magazine Granta, then based in Cambridge.

Rayner is the author of nine books. His first, Los Angeles Without A Map, was published in 1988. Part-fiction, part-travelogue, this was turned into a movie L.A. Without a Map (for which Rayner co-wrote the screenplay with director Mika Kaurismaki) starring David Tennant, Vinessa Shaw, Julie Delpy, Vincent Gallo, and, in an uncredited part, Johnny Depp.
(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Monica Lynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

An okay history of the California railroad.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-written recounting of a tumultuous, no-holds barred time in the expansion of our nation. I detested every one of The Associates and their minions and think that's why it took me way too long to finish: man's immutable nature when power and money are involved. Thank goodness for the last two chapters ... and Ambrose Bierce. I'm looking forward to picking up his "The Devil's Dictionary" and enjoying his satirical reflection on that era.

[Susan Liston · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rather jaunty little version of the creation of the transcontinental railroad. Not a pretty tale, but quite a remarkable one, considering all these guys were rags to riches stories. And corrupt as all get out, of course, but what else is new.

[***Dave Hill · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Original review: http://hill-kleerup.org/blog/2009/03/...)

Overall: Good
Writing: Good
Re-Readability: Fair
Info: Good

Rayner takes us into the lives of four men — Collis Huntington, Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins, known as the Big Four, or the Associates. More specifically, it focuses on how they banded together to build the Central Pacific Railroad, and then the Southern Pacific. It’s a tale of rapine and greed, as all four men became fabulously wealthy — first through the money skimmed off from government subsidies and bonds, through political corruption (copious bribes reaping huge rewards), and eventually from control over the rail monopoly in California and much of the Western US.

In so doing, however, they did in fact define the face of California, by choosing where and when to put in rail lines, often based on trying to outsmart potential competing lines (when they couldn’t manipulate Congress, the Administration, or state governments) or from out-and-out blackmail against communities that might — with sufficient cash incentives — get the rails coming through. The “Octopus” of the Central and Southern Pacific Railroads dominated the state, economically and politically, for many years.

The audaciousness of the men involved — master planner Huntington, quiet cooker-of-books Hopkins, vain politician Stanford, and construction boss and group moderator Crocker — is astonishing, both in what they tried to do (and accomplished), and in their utter shamelessness in theft, fraud, corporate malfeasance, bribery, political corruption, and personal vendetta.

For all of that, it turned out to be hollow, as none of the men ended up personally happy nor, for that matter, that well-known today, at least compared to the Eastern robber barons. But all of the Associates, through their machinations, left an indelible mark on the state of California that persists to this day.

Rayner’s work is a relatively quick read, easy in style. It’s well-researched, and gives a good, somewhat vivid narrative of the rise and fall of the four men and their partnership, but it still feels more of a survey than an in-depth tale of either the men or their deeds. It is, however, a great book for anyone who wants a solid introduction to know more about California’s history, corporate shenanigans in the Gilded Age, or the building of the railroads in the West. Recommended.

[May Ling · Rating 3 out of 5]

Summary: This book did not do it for me, but it did have a lot of good content. I just couldn't quite latch onto a point. It felt a bit like 4 disjointed stories that just insight to the people. It just wasn't clear to me how the four came together to build California. Can't tell who it's for.

I liked the anecdotes and stories. If I was preparing for a meeting and these guys were my investors, I'd have them prep me with the types of tidbits about how these people are. All the gossipy stuff that helps you understand the character of a person is there.

But the actual story arcs that would allow you to truly feel it, I mean really feel what it means to build a transcontinental railroad from a business perspective. It's just not there for me as it might with like a Chernow or even the book I read yesterday on Vanderbilt.

p. 7 Books starts with Collis Huntington after he's already rich AF. He's depicted as a hard man and true robber baron, who did not make friends, simply allies that he later was happy to elbow. Pretty one-sided depiction. I mean most successful people still have a lieutenant or someone that adoringly executes. It's so flat.

p. 11 - He talks about how expensive things were in San Fran. Basically, it was today's prices, but in the 1800s. Crazy! So being a shop owner that could get supplies over was even more profitable than prospecting for gold. It really puts into context why it might have been highly profitable for those people building rail lines and steamways, a la the stuff going on in C. America. Of course, the book misses all of this.

p. 57 He talks about how the investigations into Fisk and the Erie line threatened to create an investigation for the Central Pacific which Huntington owned. This changed his negotiating position with characters like Dodge, Durant, and the Ames Brothers.

There are other stories about the children being better people. Marriages that led to the merging of wealth. It's not a terrible book if you are simply looking for basic historical knowledge of CA. I need more for it to really stick and feel I understood the situation.

[Navaneethan Santhanam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I took a train ride from San Francisco to Chicago, a trip spanning 56 hours and over 2000 miles. Although mesmerised by the beauty of the landscape and the vast distances involved, I never wondered how the railway line got there in the first place.

The story of how those tracks were built, how they were financed, and the men & women (mostly men, this being the 19th century) involved is utterly fascinating. On one hand, it is a fantastic example of corporate greed, bribery, and public swindling at perhaps an unprecedented scale. On the other, the sheer audacity of building tracks to connect two oceans over 3,000 miles apart gives the protagonists an almost heroic air. Prior to the 1850s, it appears that the only way to travel from New York to San Francisco was via ship through Panama.

Although quite interesting, it almost reads like a paean to the avarice and ruthlessness of Collis Huntington, one of The Associates. Why not focus on the others - one of whom is Leland Stanford, the founder of Stanford University - who surely played a larger role than the author allows?

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and fast-moving, but I got the impression it's a distillation of a number of other histories, and would have preferred more details, illustrations/maps, exploration of personal relationships/motives, etc.

[Peter Hoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Four and a half stars actually)

The story of the first Transcontinental railroad has been told and retold, yet there remains plenty of room for discovering more and reinterpreting it. Full disclosure, I have more than just an historical interest, being the second great-grandson of Judge E.B. Crocker, Charles Crocker’s brother, who was in effect, the fifth member of the Big Four. When Charlie took over the construction of the Central Pacific, it was deemed a conflict of interest for him to remain on the Board (a curious nicety, since virtually all other such ethical considerations were blandly brushed aside for decades). E.B. took Charlie’s place. Thus Rayner’s book is another significant piece of family history for Crocker descendants.

The Associates is a fairly recent addition to the lore of the Gilded Age. And even if you have heard the story before, Rayner’s telling is exciting and fascinating. To create the railroads, it took boldness, vision, daring, financial and engineering genius, a highly competitive spirit, the ability to turn a blind eye often to moral and ethical questions, and a great deal of luck.

Rayner profiles Collis Huntington, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker. Their stories are the stuff that American capitalism was made of in the second half of the nineteenth century. Huntington may have been the boldest and most outrageous of all, making the trip to California and back via Panama a number of times. Raynor reveals that this was no cakewalk—time and delay consuming, perilous at sea and in the jungle, and by no means guaranteed to come out well. Stanford was already Governor of California when he came on board. Hopkins was the mildest and most cautious of the bunch, and Charles Crocker, a huge man who had initially walked across the continent to join the Gold Rush, and who (like the others) had quickly figured out that was far more lucrative to sell things to the prospectors than look for gold yourself. Crocker had the physique, the charisma, and the will to drive the construction project itself. When he could not find enough laborers, he imported the Chinese, who worked hard and suffered stoically. Even they, however, went on strike for better pay, and Charlie stared them down and kept them on the job.
Raynor continues the tale beyond the Golden Spike to the decades of Robber Baron capitalism and massive wealth acquisition that followed. He explains how great fortunes were made and how they eventually were lost. The great mansions in San Francisco disappeared in the 1906 earthquake. Yet random acts of philanthropy left us the Huntington Library, Stanford University, and a scattering of now public arts and culture treasures.

In the end, after revealing the worst than can be said of these over-the-top capitalists, the author reveals a grudging respect and admiration, concluding that, if they had not done what they did, the railroads would not have been built and the great economic expansion of the country would not have happened.

“Without them, no America. At the time, and in their circumstances, there was no other way for them to proceed than how they did: rapaciously. Their greed was really a good thing, spurring the Industrial Revolution with which the formation of the post-Civil War nation went hand in hand. They created wealth and opportunity, not just for themselves, but for everybody, and invented the can-do, up-for-grabs business spirit that has typified American success ever since.”
Hmmmm. I remember debating this business spirit over fifty years ago at a Fisherman’s Wharf restaurant with my then father-in-law, himself a very full-of-himself capitalist by no means related to the Crockers. He pointed out at the Bay Area skyline and pugnaciously demanded of me, “Who lit all these lights?”

My response, “Chinamen.” He never got it.

[Charles Matthews · Rating 3 out of 5]

This review originally ran in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Some stories are too good to be true, so they probably aren’t. But true or not, one that Richard Rayner tells about the California railroad baron Collis P. Huntington is key to Rayner’s portrait of the man. Huntington was in Paris in 1893, when a reporter asked for his opinion of the city’s most famous landmark.

“ ‘Your Eiffel Tower is all very well,’ Huntington told those French reporters. ‘But where’s the money in it?’ ”

Rayner begins his brisk little book “The Associates” with that story and concludes it with a similar anecdote about Huntington’s eye for profit. So although it’s nominally about the “Big Four” who made their fortunes from the building of the Central Pacific Railroad – Huntington, Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker and Mark Hopkins – Huntington so frames and dominates the book that it might have been called “He Saw the Money in It.”

Huntington even saw the money in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln: “Confusion and dismay were another opportunity for him to exercise his habitual wiles,” Rayner observes. He exploited the chaos in Washington by pushing through an override of the Railroad Act of 1864 that would have halted the Central Pacific in Nevada. Instead, it drove on to Utah. Rayner’s Huntington is the driving force of the railroad: “Out of the narrowness of his concerns sprang a grand and greedy vision, and he was working toward it even while the success of the central stem of the enterprise, crawling forward through granite and blizzards, looked hugely uncertain.”

With Huntington as primus inter pares, the other three Associates often fade into the background of Rayner’s narrative. Hopkins, as Huntington said, “was strictly an office man,” though he was not above burning the ledgers of the Central Pacific when a congressional committee came snooping. “Huntington blithely announced that the company records had been lost. ‘My partner Hopkins is a peculiar man,’ he said. ‘He considered the paper no longer worth saving.’ ”

The corpulent Crocker is presented as a genial con artist, “the most approachable of the four men.” When a commission came to inspect the construction of the railroad, Crocker showed them the best-laid sections of the track, then invited them in for a ride while the train sped over the parts that had been poorly constructed. The inspectors were fooled, and Huntington was pleased to hear it. “ ‘I think you must have slept with them,’ Huntington wrote to Crocker. ‘There is nothing like sleeping with men, or women either for that matter.’ ”
At least Hopkins and Crocker are given credit for doing something. Rayner portrays Stanford as a blowhard and a bit of a wuss, mocked by the other Associates for his laziness. “As to work he absolutely succeeds in doing nothing as near as a man can,” Crocker said of Stanford. His desire to stay put on his Peninsula farm was especially irksome: “Huntington wanted Stanford to base himself in Salt Lake City, to make an ally of Brigham Young, and hire teams of Mormons for the advance surveys. Stanford dithered. He’d become father to a son, Leland Jr., and didn’t want to leave home.” Still, Stanford was in Utah when the golden spike was driven, and made what Rayner calls “a speech pompous even by his own standards.” Huntington was at his desk in New York “as the cannons boomed and church bells began to ring out.” He left “the champagne and absurd hullabaloo to Stanford and the others.”

“The Associates” is part of Norton’s “Enterprise” series, described by the publisher thus: “Intended for both business professionals and the general reader, these are books whose insights come from the realm of business but inform the world we live in today.” This may explain the boys-will-be-boys tone with which Rayner, a British-born novelist who lives in Los Angeles, treats his robber-baron protagonists. He notes the criticism of the Associates by writers such as Ambrose Bierce and Frank Norris, as well as the San Francisco Chronicle’s attacks that led a friend of Huntington to denounce the newspaper as “a disgraceful sheet” that “believes in no honor except its own – that is to say, none at all.” Rayner also makes obligatory mention of the railroad’s exploitation of Chinese laborers, its destruction of Indian lands, and its bloody battles with settlers over land rights. He comments that contemporary analysis of the Associates and the way they worked is “ideologically pulverizing. It cuts to the heart of how we feel about business and whether political power is, or should be, the handmaiden of economic power.”

And yet the Machiavellian Huntington is something of a heroic figure in Rayner’s telling, a man who pulled off what Rayner calls “one of the great high-wire acts in the history of American business.” Stanford, the “dithering” Associate who seemed content to enjoy his wealth, is mocked as “the businessman/politician as actor, always aware that he was playing a part, … whereas Huntington was the pure product of his era, a restless commingling of intelligence and energy, of cunning and drive. Much later, in the 1880s, Stanford used his money to found the university that bears his name. Today, he’d most likely have bought a sports team.”

That’s hardly fair. Stanford may have been a windbag and he was certainly no saint, but his grief over the death of Leland Jr. was deep and genuine. And there’s a fine irony that this “laziest” of the Associates, in his impulse to memorialize his son, endowed an institution that immortalizes his name while those of the other Associates have faded. Mark Hopkins is recalled mostly because of the hotel on Nob Hill that stands where his mansion once flaunted his wealth. Crocker’s name dots the Bay Area landscape less prominently than it did before Wells Fargo gobbled up his eponymous bank. And Huntington’s name has been preserved chiefly on the plaques identifying the paintings he left to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. (He saw the money in them, but he couldn’t take it with him. It was his nephew, Henry, who used the wealth he inherited from his uncle – he also married his aunt, Huntington’s widow, merging their fortunes -- to memorialize his own name in the great library at San Marino.)

“The Associates” is a slim and lively pop history, full of fizz and sweeteners. It will do if you’re curious and uninformed about the Big Four, but its superficiality should leave you hungry for the substance of what is clearly one of the great American epics.

[tong huang · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting historical read on how the transcontinental railroad was built. The four associates are Collis Huntington, LeLand Stanford, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins. Another figure was essential to the railroad was Theo Judah, a talented engineer who designed most of the railroad and managed to get government support in building the railroad under President Lincoln. Collis Huntington was in charge of most of the operation of the Central Pacific Railroad. He spent a lot of time in Washington DC continuously lobbying for the project, continuously asking for more money for the project. LeLand Stanford later became the governor of California. After the passing of his son, he and his wife Jane Stanford decided to donate most of their money to build a university bearing his name. Charles Crocker was primarily in charge of building the railroad on the ground and was instrumental in deciding to use Chinese labor when they couldn't find enough Irish workers. Mark Hopkins was a quite and unassuming guy. He partnered with Collis Huntington in operating their shop in Sacramento catering gold rush people. He and Collis Huntington made good partners because they have opposing personalities. Towards the end, Collis Huntington made quite an enemy of the Hearst family's publication SF Examiners. The publication was very critical towards Collis.

[Riley Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A quick history of the 4 associates or capitalists that powered the Union Pacific: Huntington, Crocker, Stanford and Hopkins.

Huntington was the ultimate Scrooge who pulled the strings lobbying in Washington. Stanford managed in state politics as governor, Crocker managed the construction and Hopkins the spend thrift was the treasurer and book keeper. Despite amazing political corruption these 4 men brought about a miracle, raised up the state of California and built an empire.

This book is a salute to capitalism even despite its warts of corporatism and cronyism. This story is often told that these railroad robber barons screwed the public to build their wealth then resorted to philanthropy to appease their guilt. The truth may be more in line with the idea that these men were geniuses and their greed and self interest created the boom of post civil war America and the west.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who has lived in California for over 25 years, the last 6 years in Sacramento, I learned a lot from this book. While I admire the laying of the transcontinental railroad, I never gave a thought to how it was built (rode it once). I learned a lot about what drove California to become the state it is today. I did not even know, in spite of living in the state, of two of the four capitalists. Actually there are more people involved but these four were the ones who financed it at the start.

My only negative is that the book is skewed heavily toward Collis Huntington; more information should have been given on the others. That said, I appreciate the story and photos.

Recommended.

[Gretchen Freeman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read after a visit to the Golden Spike museum in northern Utah. A "true-to-life tale of ruthless ambition, staggering greed, and the making of a nation" which says it all. These four robber barons made their millions off the transcontinental railroad and paid some of it back to the public with founding the fabulous Huntington Rare Book LIbrary in Pasadena and Stanford University. They also introduced the idea that a corporation can keep government in its pocket. The book could have used more of their personal stories and less of the political machinations.

[Bob Rosenbaum · Rating 3 out of 5]

I could quibble with some of the writing and some of the editorial decisions the author made in telling this story. But it's a timely book about a story I never knew - difficult men with big imaginations and boundless energy, bilking the government while satisfying their endless ambitions in building the transcontinental railroad. With one big difference; in the gilded age, the robber barons didn't just talk big while delivering cheesy hotels and golf courses. For better and worse, they talked big and delivered.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book, but it wasn't exactly what I expected. I thought it would be the story of these four men--Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins--rather than the story of their roles in the creation of the Central Pacific Railroad. I would have liked to have read less about the building of the railroad itself and more about the other aspects of these men's lives. I enjoyed the last chapter the most, as it told about their legacies, and I also liked the references to Ambrose Bierce.

[Tyler Holbrook · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting topic that was very easy to digest, often hard to come by in non-fiction and especially history. However, there was little cohesion to the narrative of the Associates and the title (about building California) was very misleading. This is a book about 4 railroad titans and is only indirectly related to the development of California.

[Al Berry · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short decent little book on the four men who made the Central Pacific Railroad that United the country, financial shenanigans and all, I found it rather interesting that only one of them had issue that survived.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Darn it if this isn’t a complete justification for regulating everything to the max.

[aloveiz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Back to "the California room"!
Probably about 85% of the reading I do is non fiction and about 0% of that would be primarily categorized as history. As time goes by, I am generally interested in the ethics and feelings of events more so than the facts and orders of things. (Which I think are generally subject to the ethics and feelings of the recalling party anyway.) It's all very sentimental.

But after reading the Bierce biography, and also earlier this year, nearly forgetting what century the gold rush occurred in, this book seemed like a pretty good idea.
"The Associates" is all about capitalists, and i think that somehow it would attract people who think of that as an explicative as well as those who think of it as a complement.

Reading about the origins of the transcontinenetal railroad gives fascinating new perspectives on the evolution of the west. Raynor ties together points about the effects of muckraking journalists on the political identity of San Francisco, the mass population of L.A. (competition drove New Orleans to L.A. rail tickets from $125 to $1 in one year), the establishment of the first west coast research university (Stanford), funding for Muybridge's horses, and a number of other drastic events that we suffer or enjoy the effects of on a daily basis.

Maybe everyone has already examined the interplay and connotations of California's capitalist ascension at the last turn of the century but for me it was a nice little survey.

[Lori Beninger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Novelist and magazine columnist Kurt Andersen states (in a Time Magazine piece written in 2007) that "America Came of Age" in the era that followed the California Gold Rush. New technologies appeared, life began to move at an alarmingly fast pace, Wall Street boomed, fortunes were made overnight, the media was scurrilous and partisan, and companies began to manipulate the political environment to suit their monetary goals, introducing marketing spin and advertising into the mix. Echoes of today's headlines and stories.

Richard Rayner's "The Associates" makes the same claims, only on a more intimate scale: following the lives of four industrialists (Collis Huntington, Mark Hopkins, Charles Crocker, and Leland Stanford) who, beginning in the early 1850s, helped put California on the political map and themselves on the top of the economic food chain, any way they saw fit. They were among the first to claim that corporations should enjoy the same rights as individuals while hiding behind the corporate facade that protected them as individuals -- they wanted, and got, to have their cake and eat it too.

Rayner's style is easy to follow and the history itself fascinating. Some of the reviews claim he got a few of his facts wrong and complain that his research was conducted from secondary rather than first-hand sources, but overall this short history of four teflon-coated titans was a good and informative read.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Associates is an entertaining look at one of history's most important endeavors. The book touches on the extensive corruption used to get things done. Rayner covers many of the larger-than-life battles between The Associates and Union Pacific in addition to the lengthy-but-brutal defeat of Tom Scott's Texas & Pacific Railway. We also get to see the links to other important pieces of history, such as Leland Stanford's founding of his university while mourning his son and the role he played in funding the early development of motion pictures with Eadweard Muybridge to answer the age-old question -- if all four of a horses feet left the ground at the same time while galloping.

While very enjoyable, the writing style is a bit exhausting, often crafting lengthy paragraphs out of just a few extremely long sentences.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me it was an easy read about the beginning of the history of the beginning of California as a state, placing it in the larger context of US history and economy at that time, and the cast of characters around the four men known as the Associates (in my family the California robber barons).
Though focusing mainly on Huntington, the book does look at each of the four associates (with the least attention paid to Hopkins).
If you are interested in history of California, railroads, or the late 1800's early 1900's robber barons, this is an easy read for you. If any of those three descriptions make you wince a bit, you should probably not pick up the book.

[lyell bark · Rating 3 out of 5]

this book is okay. not the most literary history ever written but the words get the job done i guess. the best parts are in the 2nd half of the book when they are all rich and fat and arguing with words and letters. it would be cool to write to your friends that so-and-so has the brains and smell of a farmhand, and the timid heart of a housewife. we just don't have that sort of literary culture nemore i guess, so sad. also cool to know that california has been a stupid ponzi scheme, real estate scam, and corporate welfare sinkhole from the very start. jesus christ i hate this state. thanks.

[Judy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not being a native Californian, I did not grow up learning about the important founders of California commerce, so this was a good basic introduction for me. The lives of four men who made California via the Central Pacific Railroad are examined: Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker. Particular emphasis is given to the greed and determination of Huntington, in fact, so much so that it felt as though the author had some particular bias against him. It did make me want to do further reading.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is about the Big Four, or as they preferred to be called, The Associates who completed the first transcontinental railroad in the U.S. and are largely credited for creating California's boom and bust economy. This was a good read, quick and concise, with splashes of frontier and Western elements and Civil War history. It's a great story about private fortune gained at public expense. Makes you wonder, "What is today's railroad?"

[Riley · Rating 3 out of 5]

In preparation for a Sacramento visit, the history of the capitalist (but not this specific title) was recommended. Overall, it was an "okay" read. I enjoyed the first half of the book as it provides more history and insight into the beginnings and development of the West coast railroad. The latter half of the book seemed less interesting. It following the capitalist as they continued to grow/scheme their business influence.

[Ginger Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I found the author's writing style a bit tortuous at times, the story itself was really quite amazing. The Associates were crude, egocentric, and obtrusive yet delightfully crafty in their ways. I even learned a thing or two; my favorite being the the idea of a spite fence, like the one Charles Crocker built on Nob Hill. I would love to see this story made into a movie. It has historical significance as well as absurd drama and off-base amusement.

[Ari · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a quick easy read, but I'm a little nervous about the details. The author describes Lincoln as being a senator in the late 1850s, which is an obvious error. The style is breezy, the footnotes are few. I enjoyed it, but I'm a little bit of a railfan, and I'm familiar with both the setting and the story, so I may be unusually forgiving.

[Kerstin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whether you end up viewing California's Big Four as robber barons or capitalist geniuses, this tale of the building of the transcontinental railroad and subsequent railroads in California is fascinating and a quick read. It sure gives an interesting (kind-of frightening) insight into Washington politics.

[JMM · Rating 3 out of 5]

A readable history of a complex subject, The Associates profiles the men behind the American transcontinental railroad and tells of the back-room deals and the fortunes they made. Rapacious and greedy businessmen are not a favorite topic of mine but I felt the need to know a little more about the history of this crazy state I live in. Poor California...first the gold rush, then "the Big Four."