Age of Betrayal The Triumph of Money in America, 1865-1900

Age of Betrayalis a brilliant reconsideration of America's first Gilded Age, when war-born dreams of freedom and democracy died of their impossibility. Focusing on the alliance between government and railroads forged by bribes and campaign contributions, Jack Beatty details the corruption of American political culture that, in the words of Rutherford B. Hayes, transformed "a government of the people, by the people, and for the people" into "a government by the corporations, of the corporations, and for the corporations." A passionate, gripping, scandalous and sorrowing history of the triumph of wealth over commonwealth. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Jack Beatty is a senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly and news analyst for On Point, a National Public Radio news and public affairs program. He is the author of The Rascal King, winner of an American Book Award, as well as the editor of Colossus: How the Corporation Changed America. He lives in Hanover, New Hampshire.


From the Hardcover edition.