The fiercest and most notorious of the financial railroad struggles pitted Jay Gould against shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, "the Commodore." Over the 1860s Vanderbilt had invested heavily in railroads, securing financial control over the New York Central, which carried a lucrative traffic between Buffalo and New York City. The main competitive threat to the New York Central came from the Erie, a railroad Gould and his allies had bailed out of financial difficulties in the depression of 1857, then joined the board in order to manipulate its stock price on the New York Stock Exchange. When Vanderbilt moved on the Erie in 1867, Gould (together with Daniel Drew and Big Jim Fisk) maneuvered slyly, issuing thousands of shares of watered-down stock. Once Vanderbilt's unsuspecting agents bought up the largely worthless certificates, the Commodore was trapped; Gould printed thousands more that Vanderbilt was forced to buy...