Tycoon's War: How Cornelius Vanderbilt Invaded a Country to Overthrow America's Most Famous Military Adventurer
Author: Stephen Dando Collins
When he died in 1877, Cornelius Vanderbilt, founder of the Vanderbilt dynasty, was wealthier than the U.S. Treasury. But he had nearly lost his fortune in 1856, when William Walker, a young Nashville genius, set out to conquer Central America and, in the process, take away Vanderbilt’s most profitable shipping business. To win back his empire, Vanderbilt had to win a bloody war involving seven countries.
Tycoon’s War tells the story of an epic imperialist duel—a violent battle of capitalist versus idealist, money versus ambition—and a monumental clash of egos that resulted in the deaths of thousands of Americans.
Written by a master storyteller, this incredible true story, impeccably researched and never before told in full, is packed with greed, intrigue, and some of the most hair-raising battle scenes ever written.
Library Journal
Dando-Collins (Caesar's Legion ) recounts the conflict between tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt and adventurer William Walker over the control of Nicaragua from 1855 to 1857. Walker, with mercenary support, entered Nicaragua's civil war in 1855 on the side of the Democratico forces against the Legitimistas. Historians have seen the Tennessee native as wishing to reintroduce slavery to Nicaragua and encourage settlement by American Southerners. Dando-Collins claims that Walker initially acted out of personal ambition, seeking to emulate Sam Houston of Texas. Only after he was elected president of Nicaragua in 1856 did he turn to slaving-holding interests to support colonization and to bring in African labor. Dando-Collins's basis for his defense of Walker? That he came from a family hostile to slavery and there is no record that he supported the practice of slavery himself. Even if the paper trail is not there, Walker's willingness to reintroduce and thus expand slavery demonstrates tolerance for the institution and/or unscrupulous desire for power. His actions put him into conflict with Vanderbilt, who controlled a major portion of shipping routes that used Nicaragua as overland transit between the Atlantic and Pacific. After the Democratico government seized his company's assets, Vanderbilt, with the tacit encouragement of the U.S. government, supplied Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador with money for arms to depose Walker in 1857. While Dando-Collins presents the story readably, his questionable historical interpretation limits his book's value. Only for academic collections seeking comprehensive coverage.-Stephen Hupp. West Virginia Univ. Lib., Parkersburg
Kirkus Reviews
Absorbing tale of a conflict in 19th-century Central America sparked by two men with rather different ideas about Manifest Destiny. Australian historian Dando-Collins (Blood of the Caesars: How the Murder of Germanicus Led to the Fall of Rome, 2008, etc.) has written what in some measure qualifies as a dual biography of William Walker and Cornelius Vanderbilt, focusing on the circumstances that made them enemies and ended in Walker's violent death at age 36. When the book opens in 1849, Vanderbilt, who rose from poverty to become perhaps the wealthiest person in the United States, was 55 years old. He was determined to control shipping routes between America's East and West coasts, which would include winning transit rights across such Central American nations as Nicaragua and Panama. An 1849 meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John M. Clayton seemed to assure Vanderbilt the exclusive right to negotiate with the Nicaraguan government to build a canal there. None of the negotiators, however, foresaw the entrance of William Walker to rewrite their cozy scenario. Reared in Nashville, Tenn., Walker learned Greek and Latin by age 12, attended universities in the United States and Europe, earned degrees in medicine and law, then worked in New Orleans as a crusading journalist. Through a series of unlikely circumstances, the fearless Walker became an adventurer determined to spread North American influence throughout Central America. He arrived in Nicaragua in 1855 at the head of a group of mercenaries he had hired and trained; in 1856, he became the civil war-torn nation's president. When he began interfering with Vanderbilt's business plans, the tycoon decided to fight Walker with competingmercenaries. Four bloody years later, Vanderbilt had prevailed, and Walker died in front of a Honduran firing squad. Dando-Collins juggles disparate elements to maintain cohesion in a convoluted history of military campaigns, changes in governments, complicated business transactions and bizarre backdoor diplomatic dealings.
Table of Contents:
Maps
Introduction 1
1 Gun-Barrel Diplomacy 16
2 Down, but Not Out 29
3 Enter the Colonel 46
4 Landing Behind Enemy Lines 55
5 The Battle of Rivas 65
6 Victory at La Virgen 84
7 Walker's Secret Plan 99
8 Taking Granada 108
9 The Walker Way 117
10 Closing In on the Prize 136
11 On a Collision Course 145
12 Blindsiding Vanderbilt 151
13 The Gathering Storm 162
14 Going to War with Walker 172
15 The Battle of Santa Rosa 179
16 Courts-Martial and Firing Squads 186
17 A Killing or Two 193
18 The Second Battle of Rivas 205
19 President Walker 221
20 Battles on All Fronts 236
21 New Battlegrounds 250
22 Wheeling and Dealing 262
23 Here Was Granada 275
24 Closing Nicaragua's Back Door 284
25 Operation San Juan 295
26 To the Victor, the Spoils 309
27 The Surrender 324
Epilogue 329
The Protagonists' Motives 341
Bibliography 343
Notes 347
Index 359
See also: Structures of Memory or Martin Luther King JR and the Civil Rights Movement
Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business
Author: Danny Meyer
In October 1985, at age twenty-seven, Danny Meyer, with a good idea and scant experience, opened what would become one of New York City's most revered restaurants—Union Square Cafe. Little more than twenty years later, Danny is the CEO of one of the world's most dynamic restaurant organizations, which includes eleven unique dining establishments, each at the top of its game. How has he done it? How has he consistently beaten the odds and set the competitive bar in one of the toughest trades around?
In this landmark book, Danny shares the lessons he's learned while developing the winning recipe for doing the business he calls "enlightened hospitality." This innovative philosophy emphasizes putting the power of hospitality to work in a new and counterintuitive way: The first and most important application of hospitality is to the people who work for you, and then, in descending order of priority, to the guests, the community, the suppliers, and the investors. This way of prioritizing stands the more traditional business models on their heads, but Danny considers it the foundation of every success that he and his restaurants have achieved.
Some of Danny's other insights:
- Hospitality is present when something happens for you. It is absent when something happens to you. These two simple concepts—for and to—express it all.
- Context, context, context, trumps the outdated location, location, location.
- Shared ownership develops when guests talk about a restaurant as if it's theirs. That sense of affiliation builds trust and invariably leads to repeat business.
- Err on the side of generosity: You get more by first giving more.
- Wherever your center lies, know it, name it, believe in it. When you cede your core values to someone else, it's time to quit.
The New York Times - Sara Dickerman
Meyer is more persuasive and interesting, both as a storyteller and as a business adviser, when he sticks to concrete examples from his working life instead of spinning them into catchphrases that might work in a PowerPoint presentation. He has built his business not on food or service alone, but on the value of a colorful story — especially the ones that his clients tell to his future clients: the wallet lost in a cab and tracked down by Tabla's manager; the personal call from Meyer before a big anniversary dinner; a superb frozen custard on a sunny day in Madison Square Park.
Publishers Weekly
With the same grace and generosity displayed in his dining rooms, Meyer's instructive how-we-did-it account shares lessons learned on his way to becoming CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group. Meyer opened Union Square Cafe in 1985 when he was 27 years old. It hit its stride three years later when he hired chef Michael Romano, and Meyer charts its evolution from a neighborhood to international institution. Initially cautious about expansion, he opened Gramercy Tavern with chef Tom Colicchio three years later, eventually broadening his New York City restaurant empire to 11 establishments including Eleven Madison Park, Tabla, Blue Smoke, Shake Shack and the Modern. Meyer makes a distinction between service ("the technical delivery of a product") and the "Enlightened Hospitality" at the core of his business strategy-both necessary for restaurant success. He notes that hospitality "is how the delivery of that product makes its recipient feel" and shares tips like hiring "51 percenters," or staff with "skills divided 51-49 between emotional hospitality and technical excellence," and the "Five As" for addressing mistakes: awareness, acknowledge, apologize, act, additional generosity. This honest, modest book will appeal most to foodies and aspiring restaurateurs but also offers insight for entrepreneurs in any industry. (Oct.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Meyer is known to foodies as the man behind 11 acclaimed restaurants in New York City, including Union Square Caf and Gramercy Tavern. While that would be more than enough professional accomplishment for most people, apparently Meyer has had time enough on his hands to branch out into writing as well. Anyone who has started or maintained a business will have strong ideas about the best way to run things, and Meyer is no exception. While such chapter headings as "The 51 Percent Solution" and "Constant, Gentle Pressure" evoke the all-too-common themes of most leadership books, this book is something more. It is actually the story of Meyer's restaurant empire and how he got to where he is today, overlaid with his own views on management and what has worked for him. A fun and enjoyable read, it provides a good behind-the-scenes view of the restaurant business, though it's more autobiography than business how-to. Recommended for libraries with strong cookery or business collections.-Susan Hurst, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
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