| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 131.3

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| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 131.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Reviews

Robber Baron: The Life of Charles Tyson Yerkes. By John Franch. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006. 374 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. $45.)
When author John Franch needed a vivid example for the dictionary definition of "Robber Baron," he selected an unscrupulous plutocrat in the person of the influential and wealthy John Tyson Yerkes. The nineteenth-century street-railway czar gained influence, wealth, and power, but his corporate chicanery and personal tawdriness tarnished the hoped-for favorable impression he desperately sought to create as his legacy. Yerkes, a contemporary of Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, and John D. Rockefeller, has remained an obscure figure of Gilded Age, business America. This biographer believes he deserves greater visibility. Freelance writer Franch presents the controversial but colorful Tyson in impressive detail, obviously reflective of persistent, thorough research.	1
The book tells the story of a man whose family came to America from Germany circa 1700. In a sense, it may be called a tale of three cities: Philadelphia, Chicago, and London. Yerkes, born 1837 in the Quaker City, graduated from high school, and started work as a bookkeeper in 1834. Within five years he formed his first company.	. . .

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