About this book
The Age of Big Business by Burton Jesse Hendrick plunges listeners into the dramatic rise of American industry after the Civil War, tracing how a handful of captains of industry reshaped the nation's economy and everyday life. With vivid reporting and a historian’s eye, Hendrick chronicles the growth of trusts and monopolies, the steel empire, the telephone’s revolutionary impact, the spread of public utilities, and the mechanization of agriculture and automobiles that democratized mobility.
Part history, part economics and political economy, the book examines technological innovation, corporate consolidation, and the social and political consequences of rapid industrialization—urban growth, labor tensions, and new forms of wealth and power. Hendrick combines biographical sketches of leading entrepreneurs with panoramic analysis to explain how business practices and public policy evolved together during America’s Gilded Age.
Ideal for history buffs, students of economics or political economy, and anyone interested in the origins of modern corporate America, this audiobook offers an accessible, richly detailed account of how industry remade a nation and why those changes still matter today.
