The Associates: Four Capitalists Who Created California (Enterprise) Paperback – Illustrated, January 5, 2009

This is an okay summary of the big four with a few mistakes. It covers the surface but a deeper dive would require individual biographies.

I have read several other books about the development of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads, and this focuses on the personalities of the men who developed a railroad to California. The book shares some excellent research from newspapers and makes the reading more accountable. I have an interest in Archer Milton Huntington (acknowledged adopted son of Collis and Arabella) and Anna Hyatt Huntington (Internationally renowned sculptor and wife of Archer), as one of their homes is in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina where I live. You can visit the Mariner's Museum(in Newport News,VA), Hispanic Society (New York City), Huntington,West Virginia train station and library, Syracuse University's Huntington archives, Brookgreen Gardens in Myrtle Beach, S.C., and just keep being more and more intrigued by the Huntington Story and the legacy left on the East Coast because of Archer's generosity. This book tells more about Collis's early life and the possible catalyst for the driven person that he was than others I have read. (Poverty Hollow is still there in Redding, Connecticut.) His review about Arabella, Collis's second wife, and son Archer (I can't ever imagine him being called Archie), was less than kind. Archer did receive a third of the will as I just read Collis's last will. The author stated everything was basically left to Henry and Arabella. Many more people were included...And the story keeps going on. I did enjoy reading his account...

A compelling and concise history of the California railroad. One realizes that Private capital would never have been able to build the railroad. There was much financial slight-of-hand, and only a few got really rich, but the transcontinental railroad was only made possible due to govt grants and thusly it (like the Erie canal) was really a public works program, albeit a very corrupt program. But in spite of the corruption the program benefited the nation greatly. I found myself with an odd fondness for Mr Huntington, the most tyranical of the associates. Unlike Stanford, Huntington had no pretenses about who or what he was. He worked long hours ever night at having absolute control and he did it better than anyone else. He made things happen, he willed the railroad thru the mountains. I don't believe he was in it for the money, and I know he wasn't in it for the fame....he was simply driven to dream and in so doing he changed the nation. He was so bad, he was good. One review snobbishly slights this book because of a blunder here or there, and for overquoting. This misses the forest for the trees; If you want a great, quick, entertaining and educational read about early California this is the book for you.

An engaging account of the brains behind the transcontinental railroad, as well as the financiers, lobbyists, and politicians who made it possible. Most importantly, it is the story of the four men driven by their love of money who financed the construction and reaped its financial benefits. As a former high school history teacher, I would have loved to have shared this story with my students when we studied the development of the Bear Flag Republic, the impact of the California Gold Rush, how the state of California is intricately tied with these four men and the completion of the transcontinental railroad. The book is an easy read.

Novelist and magazine columnist Kurt Andersen states (in a Time Magazine piece written in 2007) that "America Came of Age" in the era that followed the California Gold Rush. New technologies appeared, life began to move at an alarmingly fast pace, Wall Street boomed, fortunes were made overnight, the media was scurrilous and partisan, and companies began to manipulate the political environment to suit their monetary goals, introducing marketing spin and advertising into the mix. Echoes of today's headlines and stories.Richard Rayner's "The Associates" makes the same claims, only on a more intimate scale: following the lives of four industrialists (Collis Huntington, Mark Hopkins, Charles Crocker, and Leland Stanford) who, beginning in the early 1850s, helped put California on the political map and themselves on the top of the economic food chain, any way they saw fit. They were among the first to claim that corporations should enjoy the same rights as individuals while hiding behind the corporate facade that protected them as individuals -- they wanted, and got, to have their cake and eat it too.Rayner's style is easy to follow and the history itself fascinating. Some of the reviews claim he got a few of his facts wrong and complain that his research was conducted from secondary rather than first-hand sources, but overall this short history of four teflon-coated titans was a good and informative read.

Comprehensive, but a good read - very interesting all the way through. I kept going from page to page, pausing at times to look online for more detail about some person or incident mentioned in the book.= The "Golden Spike" ceremony at Promontory Point (connecting San Francisco and Sacramento with Omaha by rail, suddenly ending the "Covered Wagon Era") is centered within the 198 pages (plus an 8-page set of photos). The book's index is 13 pages long.= The "star actor" throughout is Collis Porter Huntington (1821-1900), but the roles of Stanford, Hopkins, and Crocker are adequately detailed, as well as auxiliary actors including Thomas Durant (head of eastern partner Union Pacific and continuing rival), David Colton (many roles including DC lobbyist, and namesake of the railroad junction town near San Bernardino), Tom Scott (rival and later partner, for connection via Yuma to El Paso), and Ambrose Bierce (author and journalist, who convinced Congress not to extend the Railroads' loans, in an episode that "marked the beginning of the end of Southern Pacific's untrammeled political power in California")= Santa Fe Railroad is barely mentioned.

Excellent book on the four capitalists who created California. The book I think would benefit from some further detail on others who were very instumental in also creating the state if only for context. Very enjoyable book to read and well written.

I just finished the book.It's a good overview book of the story of the railtoads.It's a little short and mostly focuses on Collis Huntington.I recommend the book, especially as a first book on the topic.