Les Standiford

As a political reward, transit cop Richard Corrigan joins New York governor Fielding Dawson's entourage on a camping trip in the Wyoming wilderness. Once there, accidents start occurring with deadly consequences until only three of the original party remain.

Here is history that reads like fiction: the riveting story of two founding fathers of American industry--Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick--and the bloody steelworkers' strike that transformed their fabled partnership into a furious rivalry. Author Les Standiford begins at the bitter end, when the dying Carnegie proposes a final meeting after two decades of separation, probably to ease his conscience. Frick's reply: "Tell him that I'll meet him in hell."It is a fitting epitaph. Set against the backdrop of the Gilded Age, a time when Horatio Alger preached the gospel of upward mobility and expansionism went hand in hand with optimism, Meet You in Hell is a classic tale of two men who embodied the best and worst of American capitalism. Standiford conjures up the majesty and danger of steel manufacturing, the rough-and-tumble of late-nineteenth-century big business, and the fraught relationship of "the world's richest man" and the ruthless coke magnate to whom he entrusted his companies. Enamored of Social Darwinism, the emerging school of thought that applied the notion of survival of the fittest to human society, both Carnegie and Frick would introduce revolutionary new efficiencies and meticulous cost control to their enterprises, and would quickly come to dominate the world steel market. But their partnership had a dark side, revealed most starkly by their brutal handling of the Homestead Steel Strike of 1892. When Frick, acting on Carnegie's orders to do whatever was necessary, unleashed three hundred Pinkerton detectives, the result was the deadliest clash between management and labor in U.S. history. WHILE BLOOD FLOWED, FRICK SMOKED ran one newspaper headline. The public was outraged. An anarchist tried to assassinate Frick. Even today, the names Carnegie and Frick cannot be uttered in some union-friendly communities.Resplendent with tales of backroom chicanery, bankruptcy, philanthropy, and personal idiosyncrasy, Meet You in Hell is a fitting successor to Les Standiford's masterly Last Train to Paradise. Artfully weaving the relationship of these titans through the larger story of a young nation's economic rise, Standiford has created an extraordinary work of popular history.From the Hardcover edition.

A chronicle of the 1947 baseball season during which Jackie Robinson broke the race barrier offers a sixtieth anniversary tribute based on interviews with Robinson's wife, daughter, and teammates.

Explores the role of the Sons of Liberty in the American Revolution.

Last Train to Paradise is acclaimed novelist Les Standiford's fast-paced and gripping true account of the extraordinary construction and spectacular demise of the Key West Railroad--one of the greatest engineering feats ever undertaken, destroyed in one fell swoop by the strongest storm ever to hit U.S. shores. In 1904, the brilliant and driven entrepreneur Henry Flagler, partner to John D. Rockefeller and the true mastermind behind Standard Oil, concocted the dream of a railway connecting the island of Key West to the Florida mainland, crossing a staggering 153 miles of open ocean--an engineering challenge beyond even that of the Panama Canal. "The financiers considered the project and said, Unthinkable. The engineers pondered the problems and from all came one verdict, Impossible. . . ." But build it they did, and the railroad stood as a magnificent achievement for twenty-two years. Once dismissed as "Flagler's Folly," it was heralded as "the Eighth Wonder of the World"--until a will even greater than Flagler's rose up in opposition. In 1935, a hurricane of exceptional force, which would be dubbed "the Storm of the Century," swept through the tiny islands, killing some 700 residents and workmen and washing away all but one sixty-foot section of track, on which a 320,000-pound railroad engine stood and "gripped its rails as if the gravity of Jupiter were pressing upon it." Standiford brings the full force and fury of this storm to terrifying life. In spinning his saga of the railroad's construction, Standiford immerses us in the treacherous world of the thousands of workers who beat their way through infested swamps, lived in fragile tent cities on barges anchored in the midst of daunting stretches of ocean, and suffered from a remarkable succession of three ominous hurricanes that killed many and washed away vast stretches of track. Steadfast through every setback, Flagler inspired a loyalty in his workers so strong that even after a hurricane dislodged one of the railroad's massive pilings, casting doubt over the viability of the entire project, his engineers refused to be beaten. The question was no longer "Could it be done?" but "Can we make it to Key West on time?" to allow Flagler to ride the rails of his dream. Last Train to Paradise celebrates this crowning achievement of Gilded Age ambition, a sweeping tale of the powerful forces of human ingenuity colliding with the even greater forces of nature's wrath.From the Hardcover edition.

The Riveting Story of the Federal City and the Men Who Built ItIn 1814, British troops invaded Washington, consuming President Madison's hastily abandoned dinner before setting his home and the rest of the city ablaze. The White House still bears scorch and soot marks on its foundation stones. It was only after this British lesson in "hard war," designed to terrorize, that Americans overcame their resistance to the idea of Washington as the nation's capital and embraced it as a symbol of American might and unity.The dramatic story of how the capital rose from a wilderness is a vital chapter in American history, filled with intrigue and outsized characters--from George Washington to Pierre Charles L'Enfant, the eccentric, passionate, difficult architect who fell in love with his adopted country. This Frenchman--both inspired by the American cause of liberty and wounded while defending it--first endeared himself to then General Washington with a sketch drawn at Valley Forge. Designing buildings, parades, medals, and coins, L'Enfant became the creator of a new American aesthetic, but the early tastemaker had ambition and pride to match his talent. Self-serving and incapable of compromise, he was consumed with his artistic dream of the Federal City, eventually alienating even the president, his onetime champion.Washington struggled to balance L'Enfant's enthusiasm for his brilliant design with the strident opposition of fiscal conservatives such as Thomas Jefferson, whose counsel eventually led to L'Enfant's dismissal. The friendships, rivalries, and conflicting ideologies of the principals in this drama--as revealed in their deceptively genteel correspondence and other historical sources--mirror the struggles of a fledgling nation to form a kind of government the world had not yet known. In these pages, as in Last Train to Paradise and Meet You in Hell, master storyteller Les Standiford once again tells a compelling, uniquely American story of hubris and achievement, with a man of epic ambition at its center. Utterly absorbing and scrupulously researched, Washington Burning offers a fresh perspective on the birth of not just a city, but a nation.From the Hardcover edition.

As uplifting as the tale of Scrooge itself, this is the story of how one writer and one book revived the signal holiday of the Western world.Just before Christmas in 1843, a debt-ridden and dispirited Charles Dickens wrote a small book he hoped would keep his creditors at bay. His publisher turned it down, so Dickens used what little money he had to put out A Christmas Carol himself. He worried it might be the end of his career as a novelist.The book immediately caused a sensation. And it breathed new life into a holiday that had fallen into disfavor, undermined by lingering Puritanism and the cold modernity of the Industrial Revolution. It was a harsh and dreary age, in desperate need of spiritual renewal, ready to embrace a book that ended with blessings for one and all.With warmth, wit, and an infusion of Christmas cheer, Les Standiford whisks us back to Victorian England, its most beloved storyteller, and the birth of the Christmas we know best. The Man Who Invented Christmas is a rich and satisfying read for Scrooges and sentimentalists alike.From the Hardcover edition.

Documents the story of William Mulholland's Los Angeles aqueduct, the largest public water project ever built, describing how it transformed a small desert city into a modern metropolis.