America in its most gaudy, greedy, and ruthless era forms the setting of The Financier. Frank Cowperwood, the hero of this extraordinary novel, is more than a match for his times. As he deals and double-deals, betrays and is in turn betrayed, Cowperwood emerges as the very embodiment of animal egotism and appetite, hungering for a fulfillment he himself cannot name, restlessly seeking it in wealth, in women, in power. His climb to success becomes the American success story stripped down to brutal realities - a struggle for spoils without conscience, pity or even final purpose. A work of immense social documentation, shaped by intense human compassion, The Financier is a major achievement of a writer whom Alfred Kazin has termed "stronger than all the others of his time, and at the same time more poignant; greater than the world he has described, but as significant as the people in it." Here, Dreiser, as Professor Larzer Ziff of the University of California at Berkeley declares, "succeeded beyond any of his predecessors or successors in producing a great American business novel."
(back cover)