22 h 13 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 22 h 13 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if the same city that helps you build a fortune can turn every deal against you?
In Theodore Dreiser's The Financier, Frank Algernon Cowperwood learns to read money and people with equal skill. A banker's son in Philadelphia, he builds his fortune among contractors, bankers and political bosses. George Stener, the city treasurer, brings public funds within his reach. In this world, a useful connection can matter as much as a sharp mind.
At home, Frank's wife, Lillian, wants steadiness and respectability. Aileen Butler, the spirited daughter of a powerful political boss, is drawn to his confidence. As wealth grows and his marriage fades, business and desire become harder to separate. Dreiser follows the loans, bonds and bribes in patient detail, asking whether Cowperwood breaks the rules or simply understands the game.
What you’ll discover
- A mind for money Watch Frank turn close observation and a gift for calculation into the foundations of wealth.
- A city trading favors Follow public money through private hands, where political loyalty and business advantage meet.
- Desire beyond respectability Meet Lillian and Aileen, whose different hopes bring Frank's private choices into focus.
- The details behind power Explore the loans, bribes and bonds that give this portrait of ambition its weight.
- A hero worth questioning Consider a gifted, ruthless man without an easy answer about where skill becomes wrongdoing.
Who will love it
For readers who love novels about money, cities and ambition, and who enjoy a hero they can admire and doubt in the same chapter.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A boy learns that life feeds on life
- He learns money from the inside
- A marriage built on sensible grounds
- The city treasurer and the borrowed money
- Aileen Butler enters his life
- Wealth, art and the look of power
- The Chicago fire and the panic
- What the novel is really about
- How Dreiser tells it
Who’s who
- Frank Algernon CowperwoodA Philadelphia banker's son and gifted broker who believes the strong take what they can and sets out to build a fortune.
- Henry Worthington CowperwoodFrank's father, a careful bank clerk who rises in his bank and helps open doors for his ambitious son.
- Lillian Semple CowperwoodFrank's wife, a calm widow slightly older than he is, who wants a steady home and a respectable life.
- Aileen ButlerEdward Butler's young, red haired and spirited daughter, restless in a strict home and drawn to Frank's confidence.
- Edward ButlerAn Irish contractor who rose from hauling garbage to wealth and became a powerful political boss, protective of his family.
- George StenerPhiladelphia's city treasurer, vain and weak with money, who depends on Frank to make public funds work for him.
Formats and delivery
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- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 22 h 13 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 14 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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El financiero
by Theodore Dreiser · 1912
In Philadelphia, Frank Cowperwood builds a fortune through political favors that can also ruin him.
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In short
The Financier is a novel by Theodore Dreiser, published in 1912. It follows Frank Algernon Cowperwood, a banker's son in Philadelphia, as he turns a sharp mind for money into a fortune in the years before and after the American Civil War.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A boy learns that life feeds on life
The novel opens in Philadelphia, where Frank Cowperwood is born in 1837 into a respectable family. His father, Henry Worthington Cowperwood, is a bank clerk with steady habits and modest means. The household is orderly and comfortable, and the boy grows up watching how people earn, spend and save. He is quick, watchful and unusually calm for a child.
The key scene comes early. On his way past a fish market, Frank often stops at a tank in a shop window. In it a lobster is kept with a squid, and each day he checks on them. The squid, which seems the stronger, cannot be caught at first, and the lobster, slowly and without hurry, wears the squid down. Over many days the lobster wins and the squid is eaten.
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What is The Financier by Theodore Dreiser about?
It tells of Frank Cowperwood, a gifted Philadelphia broker in the mid nineteenth century, who builds a fortune through city loans and political ties while pursuing an affair with a powerful man's daughter.
Is Frank Cowperwood based on a real person?
Yes. Dreiser modelled him on Charles Yerkes, an American financier who made his money in Philadelphia and later in Chicago street railways. Dreiser changed names and many details, so the novel is fiction.
What is the lobster and squid scene in The Financier?
As a boy, Frank watches a lobster slowly kill a squid in a fish market tank. The scene teaches him that life feeds on life, and it shapes his view of business and people.
The author
Theodore Dreiser
1871–1945 · American novelist and journalist
Theodore Dreiser was an American novelist and journalist born in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1871. He lived in New York and later in Los Angeles, where he died in 1945. His novels include Sister Carrie (1900), Jennie Gerhardt (1911), The Financier (1912), and An American Tragedy (1925).
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