“[P]rogress marches with tragedy[;] ... new capacities breed new horrors,” as T. J. Stiles writes on page 67 of his masterful biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt titled The First Tycoon (Knopf, 2009). Mr. Stiles refers in that passage to the death and destruction caused by a series of regrettable accidents at the dawn of the...
Read More »