AN AGE OF EXTREMES

You learn about economics in this volume, usually a snore, but there’s not a yawn in the house when you meet dynamic movers and changers like Mother Jones and Ida Tarbell; the powerful captains of industry: J. Pierpont Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and John D. Rockefeller; the muckrakers, the poet Emma Lazarus, two brothers who want to fly, and a teddy bear president.