Reading in the car...

...(not while driving, but to my wife, while she drives), T.J. Stiles' biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt, raised to be a thoroughly economic being--his mother once foreclosed on the mortgage of a widow, who happened to be her daughter--was, as Stiles shows, the first tycoon. This is a well-researched and beautifully written book that will keep you riveted!