February 20, 2024
Continuing our series of book reviews in time for the holiday gift-giving season, here’s a quick look at Michael Perelman’s Railroading Economics, a title, and a subject, that intrigued me for two reasons. Trivially, as readers know, I’m by way of being a rail fan; more importantly, when I was a mere sprat, I read Matthew Josephson’s Robber Barons. Josephson’s tales of Jim Fisk watering the stock of the Erie Railroad — ‘Gone where the woodbine twineth’ was Fisk’s answer to where the money went — and his running buddy Jay Gould — ‘I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half’ (attributed) — trying to corner the gold market would inoculate anyone from belief in the ideology of ‘perfect competition.’ They certainly did me…. This is a long and complicated story, and Perelman tells it well.