Monopolies in America: Empire Builders and Their Enemies from Jay Gould to Bill Gates. By Charles R. Geisst. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. x, 355. $30.00.

Extract

The basic problem with writing a history of American Big Business is finding some method to organize the familiar chronicles of companies and people as well as the usual stories of good and evil into some coherent book of reasonable length. The organizing method adopted by Charles Geisst is to focus on the popular reaction to “monopolies,” more accurately, private concentrations of economic power. For the most part, this method succeeds, assisted in no small part by Geisst's smooth style and cynical, perhaps jaded, attitude.