Big Four

Here for the first time is told in a single volume one of the most remarkable stories in American history. An Eastener is never long in California without hearing something of "the big four": four Sacramento shopkeepers--Collis P. Huntington, Lelan Stanford, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker--who got control of the newly organized Central Pacific Railroad property. These men are portrayed in Mr. Lewis's volume vividly and with a great wealth or pertinent anecdote. Thus their true characters are revealed and the grandiose era in which they lived and operated is re-created as well. Huntington, the shrewd manipulator and lobbyist in Washington, founded the great fortune which is responsible for the magnificent library at San Marino; Leland Stanford, Governor of California and United States Senator, created Leland Stanford Junior University; Hopkins, the cold, quiet watchdog of the railroad's treasury, kept himself out of the limelight, out of politics and scandal, yet, like the others, died enormously wealthy; while Crocker founded a dynasty of bankers still important in the affairs of California and the nation. Oscar Lewis, a longtime authority on Californiana and secretary of the Book Club of California, spent six years gathering the material for The Big Four and writing it. The result is a definitive telling of a story that is ever fresh and ever fascinating.