History of the Great American Fortunes Vol. 1: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

History of the Great American Fortunes Vol. 1, credited to Gustavus Myers, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of History of the Great American Fortunes Vol. 1 by Gustavus Myers. Read in English by Celine Major. History of the Great American Fortunes by Gustavus Myers is a landmark early-20th-century critique of how immense wealth was accumulated in the United States. First published in three volumes between 1909 and 1910, the book examines the rise of powerful American fortunes—from colonial landowners to railroad magnates and industrial monopolists such as the Astors, Vanderbilts, Morgans, and Rockefellers. He portrays America's great fortunes not as heroic tales of entrepreneurship but as case studies in systemic injustice, revealing how economic power was amassed not through ingenuity alone but through fraud, exploitation, land grabs, political influence, and manipulation of laws and finance. Myers contends that economic inequality was built into the structure of American capitalism, producing concentrated wealth alongside widespread poverty and labor exploitation. - Summary by Celine Major

Recording facts

• Recording title: History of the Great American Fortunes Vol. 1
• Author credits: Gustavus Myers
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 19
• Listed recording duration: 8:19:55

Catalogue topics

• economy
• wealth
• captialism
• American capitalism

Track guide

1. 00 - Preface — 6:58
2. 01 - P. 1 Chapter 1 — 20:55
3. 02 - P. 1 Chapter 2 — 37:59
4. 03 - P. 1 Chapter 3 — 20:58
5. 04 - P. 1 Chapter 4 — 14:05
6. 05 - P. 1 Chapter 5 — 30:05
7. 06 - P. 1 Chapter 6 — 19:31
8. 07 - P. 2 Chapter 1 — 20:48
9. 08 - P. 2 Chapter 2 — 27:26
10. 09 - P. 2 Chapter 3-1 — 21:47
11. 10 - P. 2 Chapter 3-2 — 27:25
12. 11 - P. 2 Chapter 4-1 — 23:08
13. 12 - P. 2 Chapter 4-2 — 23:57
14. 13 - P. 2 Chapter 5 — 35:28
15. 14 - P. 2 Chapter 6 — 39:28
16. 15 - P. 2 Chapter 7 — 32:31
17. 16 - P. 2 Chapter 8 — 36:24
18. 17 - P. 2 Chapter 9 — 27:43
19. 18 - P. 2 Chapter 10 — 33:19

Listen to this recording

Open the complete recording and player on Internet Archive. The player includes the full track list and available download formats.

Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.