If any entrepreneur deserves our attention it is surely Cornelius Vanderbilt. But for some, the study of entrepreneurs will illuminate the past and the present ? and put life into our cliometric narrative. Why, then, should economic historians study the careers of entrepreneurs? Not all of us should. (In fact, most of us seem to believe that if you take away an entire technological complex, like the railroads, little of much importance would really change.) Take one of them away and nothing of great importance will really change. American economic history has been cast as the story of millions of diligent and clever beavers working away and transforming the landscape. In the view of most economic historians, it is the rules of the game ? the incentives and the institutions ? that really matter, not the players. After all, we are firm believers in comparative advantage and studying entrepreneurship ? even if it is economically important ? doesn?t seem to be our comparative advantage. What we do not understand, we simply ignore and leave to others. We sort of know what entrepreneurship is and that it can have a profound impact on economic performance, but it?s usually just too difficult to model and measure. Reviewed for EH.NET by Robert Whaples, Department of Economics, Wake Forest University.Įconomists have always had a hard time dealing with entrepreneurs ? as individuals and in the aggregate. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt.

His first book, Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War, won the Ambassador Book Award and the Peter Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship, and was a New York Times Notable Book.The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt Author(s): Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, taught at Columbia University and served as an advisor for the PBS series American Experience. Stiles has held the Gilder Lehrman Fellowship in American History at the Dorothy and Lewis B. What business innovations, including the modern corporation, did Vanderbilt successfully create? How did he rout every competitor? What did President Lincoln ask of him in the Civil War? Why did he, one of the North’s leading business man, embrace the philosophy of the southern Jacksonian Democrats? Co-sponsored by Harvard Book Store. Stiles contends that Vanderbilt did more than any other individual to shape the economic world today. Born humbly on Staten Island, an un-schooled fist fighter, he lived to earn the respect of New York’s social elite and amassed one of the nation’s first impossibly vast fortunes. Stiles, author of The First Tycoon, discusses the life of 19th century railroad magnate, Cornelius Vanderbilt.

The first tycoon cornelius vanderbilt