From the Book - First edition
Genesis. First principles ; Patriotism and profit ; The acts of the founders ; Building with other people's money ; Golden spike
A railroad life: H.K. Thomas
Annus horribilis: 1873. Springtime in Mexico ; Springtime in Canada ; The Indians' perpetual winter ; Political storms brewing ; Information and trust ; The long winter ; Stories of the fall
A railroad life: William Hyde
Friends. The lobby ; Antimonopoly and party politics ; The Southern Transcontinental ; Reform in the Gilded Age ; A railroad life: Elias C. Boudinot
Spatial politics. Absolute space ; Relational space ; The things they carried ; How railroad rates construct space ; The rise of the octopus ; Regulating space
A railroad life: Alfred A. Cohen
Kilkenny cats. Creative destruction ; The Colton trial ; Territory ; Rationalizing irrationality ; Superheroes of bad management ; A system that did not bury its dead
Mise en scene: labor in nature
Men in octopus suits. The visible hand ; Men and boys: manhood and management ; A political animal ; Going off the tracks
A railroad life: William Mahl
Workingmen. Control of work ; The knights of labor ; Contract labor and the Chinese ; Rock Springs ; Workers' marginalism
A railroad life: William Pinkerton
Looking backward. Benevolent trusts ; Waiting for natural monopoly ; Labor's defeats ; Bears ; The Interstate Commerce Commission ; The Interstate-Commerce Railway Association
Mise en scene: the death of Johanna Grogan
Collapse. An Alcoholics Anonymous for railroads ; Bankers ; Villard and Adams ; The second fall of Henry Villard ; The panic of 1893 ; The struggles of the octopus
Mise en scene: reading the newspapers
Strike. The courts ; Union Pacific and Great Northern ; Pullman ; The decline of the octopus
Mise en scene: following the detectives
Creative destruction. Dumb growth ; Cattle ; The diverging Dakotas ; Rain follows the plow
Maps: Major western railroads, 1879
Major western railroads, 1885
Map A: Distribution of Union Pacific stockholders by city, 1869
Map B: Kansas railroads, 1893
Map C: Southern Pacific and Central Pacific land grants in the Central Valley of California.