It was a time of poverty and enterprise, when poor men slaved in the mines, rich men became barons and America grew from a backward agricultural colony to the industrial force of the modern world. The driving power behind this transformation was coal, the black gold that even today illuminates our cities and runs our personal computers.
In The Kingdom of Coal tells the extraordinary story of coal through the eyes of two families - one the magnates, one the miners - over three generations while locked together, for better or worse, in a common quest.

He tamed the market's bulls and bears. "He was the best friend I have ever had in every way."-J. P. Morgan It was the height of the Gilded Age and J. Pierpont Morgan controlled the fate of railroads, corporations, and governments. The wealthy and influential were said to tremble before his blinding intellect and intimidating gaze, yet he deferred to one man: Anthony J. Drexel. Drexel-whose name is familiar today only through the university he founded and his recently canonized niece and protegee, Katharine-was the most influential financier of the nineteenth century. The second son of an Austrian emigre, Anthony Drexel (1826-1893) soon established himself as the preeminent financial mind in the Philadelphia currency brokerage his father began in 1838. Shunning publicity, self-promotion, and high-profile public accolades (he declined President Ulysses S. Grant's invitation to become Secretary of the Treasury), Drexel initiated a partnership with J. P. Morgan and his father, Junius, that became the most powerful financial combination of its age. At a time when the United States did not have a central bank, the government as well as large-scale commercial ventures relied on financiers to raise the enormous sums of money necessary to build railroads, construct factories, and fight major wars. With branches and partnerships in London, Paris, Chicago, and New York, all benefiting from their leader's reputation for impeccable integrity, Drexel's firms were able to steer American business through the most extraordinary long-term economic growth of any nation in world history, as well as through four devastating depressions, an enlightening lesson in the cyclical nature of the U.S. economy. Drexel and his firm quietly pioneered many of the financial and business strategies that we now take for granted, such as trading national currencies, guaranteeing credit for travelers abroad, rewarding workers based on individual initiative, and offering "sweat equity" to deserving employees who could not afford to buy stock. By cultivating Morgan's self-confidence and allowing his younger business partner to become the public face for the firm, Drexel was able to avoid attention and, instead, nurture his extended family. Today, Anthony J. Drexel's influence and accomplishments are mostly forgotten or credited to others, but after decades of detective work and careful research, Dan Rottenberg has succeeded in writing the first biography of this exceptionally influential and elusive man. Since Drexel gave no interviews, kept no diaries, held no public offices, and destroyed most of his personal papers, Rottenberg had painstakingly to track down every reference and anecdote he could find and, in the process, discovered 150 previously unknown letters and cables in Drexel's hand. Drexel believed that there is no limit to what one can accomplish if one doesn't mind who gets the credit, but as The Man Who Made Wall Street shows, the balance has finally been paid in full.

THE ONLY GUIDE YOU'LL NEED TO WISELY MANAGE YOUR INHERITANCE AND MAKE IT GROW FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS...

You're not alone. Sixty million Americans stand to be on the receiving end of an inheritance in the coming years. Planning is crucial if you hope to preserve your windfall, save on taxes, and avoid family squabbles. In The Inheritor's Handbook, expert Dan Rottenberg offers a comprehensive guide through the inheritance process that gets to the heart of the complex issues, both financial and emotional, that beneficiaries face. He demonstrates how future heirs can discuss money and wills, choose advisers, manage investments, and much more. Using real-life examples, Rottenberg provides tested solutions to sensitive inheritance issues -- before the time of death, at the time of death, and years later. The Inheritor's Handbook is the only book you'll need to help you manage the difficulties, decisions, and opportunities that come with inheriting.

"Middletown Jews... takes us, through nineteen fascinating interviews done in 1979, into the lives led by mainly first generation American Jews in a small mid-western city." San Diego Jewish Times

..". this brief work speaks volumes about the uncertain future of small-town American Jewry." Choice

"The book offers a touching portrait that admirably fills gaps, not just in Middletown itself but in histories in general." Indianapolis Star

..". a welcome addition to the small but growing number of monographs covering local aspects of American Jewish history." Kirkus Reviews

In Middletown, the landmark 1927 study of a typical American town (Muncie, Indiana), the authors commented, "The Jewish population of Middletown is so small as to be numerically negligible... and makes] the Jewish issue slight." But WAS the "Jewish issue" slight? What did it mean to be a Jew in Muncie? That is the issue that this book seeks to answer. The Jewish experience in Muncie reflects what many similar communities experienced in hundreds of Middletowns across the midwest."

Here is one man's uproarious, adventuresome journey through the 20th century: from Main-Line debutante parties to the Battle of the Coral Sea, from affluence in the Roaring '20s to poverty in the Great Depression and more.

Albert M. Greenfield (1887-1967), an ambitious immigrant outsider, was courted for his business acumen by mayors, senators, governors, and presidents, including Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. As this feisty Russian Jew built a business empire that encompassed real estate, stores (including Bonwit Teller and Tiffany's), hotels (including the Ben Franklin and the Bellevue-Stratford), banks, newspapers, transportation companies, and even the Loft Candy Corporation, he challenged the entrenched business elite. Greenfield was also instrumental in bringing both major political conventions to Philadelphia in 1948. In The Outsider, veteran journalist and best-selling author Dan Rottenberg deftly chronicles the astonishing rises, falls, and countless reinventions of this savvy businessman. Greenfield's power allowed him to cross social, religious, and ethnic boundaries with impunity. He alarmed Philadelphia's conservative business and social leaders-Christians and Jews alike-some of whom plotted his downfall. In this engaging account of Greenfield's fascinating life, Rottenberg demonstrates the extent to which one uniquely brilliant and energetic man pushed the boundaries of society's limitations on individual potential. The Outsider provides a microcosmic look at three twentieth-century upheavals: the rise of Jews as a crucial American business force, the decline of America's Protestant establishment, and the transformation of American cities.