Tycoon's War

Stephen Dando-Collins's narrative history of the Erie War — the battle between Cornelius Vanderbilt and the Erie Railroad faction (Gould, Fisk, Drew) for control of 19th-century American railroad empire.

The Erie War as template for corporate warfare: the conflict between Vanderbilt and the Erie faction (1867-1868) involved bribery of legislators, competing injunctions, flight to New Jersey to escape New York courts, stock dilution, and ultimately the first major instance of corporate lobbyists rewriting laws mid-conflict. Documents how the rules of American capitalism were made in real time through power struggles, not rational institution design.