The Financier (Annotated)

Theodore Dreiser's The Financier (1912), the opening volume of his Trilogy of Desire, is a searching naturalist study of ambition, capital, and moral elasticity in post–Civil War America. Centered on Frank Cowperwood, a Philadelphia financier modeled partly on Charles T. Yerkes, the novel examines the mechanisms of banking, municipal politics, speculation, and social ascent with documentary precis...