Slightly to the north, commercial shipping passes through the Golden Gate - the same isthmus, he notes, that Vanderbilt's steamships once traveled. An ocean viewįrom his simple, two-story apartment, located in former servicemen's quarters near Baker Beach in the Presidio, Stiles can look out to the Pacific Ocean. He started his research late in 2001, and during the time he was working on it, he met and married his wife, Jessica moved from New York, where he had lived 20 years, to San Francisco and had a son, Dillon, 2. Stiles spent seven years on the Vanderbilt book. a crawling swam of small souls,' Mark Twain wrote him in an open letter. Some saw him as 'the ultimate meritocrat,' Stiles writes, while others resented his boundless acquisition, his disregard for government regulation and the schism he created between haves and have-nots. He was an enigma to many, yet he became more and more interesting to me as I peeled back the layers.'ĭuring his 66-year career of empire building, Vanderbilt (1794-1877) was alternately despised and worshiped. He was ruthless, yet forgave business conflicts and often befriended his rivals after their battles ended. 'He was big, tough, profane and competitive to the core.

'Vanderbilt was the first man to be dubbed a 'robber baron,' ' Stiles said in his apartment in the Presidio of San Francisco. A recent winner of the National Book Award for nonfiction, 'The First Tycoon' surveys a man who was born during the Washington presidency, had almost no formal education yet amassed a fortune of $100 million and set the mold, Stiles argues, for a rough-and-tumble free-trade economy that still exists.

The first tycoon