The Driver

This is the forgotten American epic about what happens when you build something extraordinary in a country that celebrates success until that success becomes too dangerous to tolerate. Henry M. Galt sees what no one else sees: a dying railroad as an artery of national possibility. Through the panic of 1893, when lesser men flee, Galt buys, rebuilds, and transforms a failing enterprise into the backbone of America's economy. He becomes the wealthiest person in the nation by sheer force of vision and will. But his triumph becomes his vulnerability. Those who cannot comprehend his genius unite against him, and the federal government turns on the man who saved the railroad. Garrett wrote this in 1922, three decades before Atlas Shrugged, and the novel feels like a warning from another era that sounds urgently modern. It is a brutal, clear-eyed examination of American capitalism, the price of genius, and the peculiar cruelty of a society that venerates success until it threatens the established order.