When the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, America's railways soon exploded into a titanic industry helmed by speculators, crooks, and visionaries. The vicious competition between Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, and J.P. Morgan sparked stock market frenzies and crashes, while transforming the nation's geography. As Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Hiltzik recounts, the four-decade battle between the robber barons also produced dramatic, lasting changes in the interplay of business and government.