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Staking his reputation and wealth on the Northern Pacific, Cooke was soon whipsawed by the railroad's mismanagement, questionable contracts, and construction problems. Financier J. P. Morgan undermined him, and the Crédit Mobilier scandal ended congressional support. When railroad surveyors and army escorts ignored Sioux chief Sitting Bull's warning not to enter the Yellowstone Valley, Indian attacks--combined with alcoholic commanders--led to embarrassing setbacks on the field, in the nation's press, and among investors.

Lubetkin's suspenseful narrative describes events played out from Wall Street to the Yellowstone and vividly portrays the soldiers, engineers, businessmen, politicians, and Native Americans who tried to build or block the Northern Pacific.

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A Fascinating New Light

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Every so often a new author plumbs old tales with fresh insight, interpretation and newly discovered research and does so in a way that his analysis intertwines biography with the totality of the historic events and times that were the person's life. Such is the case with John Lubetkin's Jay Cooke's Gamble. As the book's subtitle describes, who would have thought Sitting Bull directly contributed to a severe US financial panic. But that is exactly what happened: Jay Cooke's Northern Pacific Railroad touched off a Sioux War that caused the Panic of 1873. Seeking a new challenge after financing the North's portion of the US Civil War, Cooke embarks on a new undertaking that is nothing less than the construction of a second transcontinental railroad, a northern route stretching from Duluth, Minnesota to Seattle, Washington. In the process he reignites war with the Sioux, rescues George Armstrong Custer from obscurity, creates Yellowstone National Park, sets off a wave of Northern European immigration, pushed frontier settlement 400 miles further westward, halted western Canada's drift into the US orbit, triggered the Panic of 1873 and spurred JP Morgan's rise. This is an absolutely wonderful story, excellently crafted, beautifully written and supported by quality maps. It manages to fit the construction of the Northern Pacific within the environment is transcended, the West, with the East, the area within which it was managed and financed. It includes ugly politics, shady dealing, illegal activities, larger than life personalities, Indian warfare, dishonesty and all of the other negatives one could expect from a swashbuckling story that spans not only a continent but the Atlantic Ocean as well. Lubetkin's suspenseful narrative describes events played our from Wall Street to the Yellowstone and Germany's Paletine while vividly portraying the soldiers, engineers, businessmen, politicians and Native Americans who alternately seek to build, stop or destroy the construction of the Northern Pacific. A good tale well told make no mistake: This man can write!

Jay Cooke's Gamble

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Jay Cooke's Gamble covers important background into the North pacific Railroad's history. It does not focus much on the actual railroad operations, but rather the financing and surveying behind the scenes. The author writes in a very readable style and does his subject justice. The reader will be transported to a time when railroads determined settlement of the American interior. But before the roads could be built, the land had to be surveyed, and in this case the land was also still occupied by natives who wished to preserve their traditional way of life. The reader will encounter a cast of characters ranging from the venerable Jay Cooke himself, to General Geoerge Armstrong Custer, and all the important NP company engineers and surveyors in between. Some were drunkards (the author appears to have a strong bias against alcohol), some prone to mismanagement, and some, like Cooke, never set foot in the land where the action took place. All of this makes for a very entertaining and informative read. One statistic does stand out as being a possible typo: the author on page 274 states land in Bismarck, Dakota was selling for as much as $8000/acre. That figure appears high. But this is a very good book. One hopes the author will continue on and write the history of the railroad after Cooke's demise and the Northern Pacific's ultimate completion and beyond to its eventual merger with the Great Northern and CB&Q.

Readable History

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This is one of those special books that is virtually impossible to put down once you start reading. Written in a highly readable, narrative style that puts the reader in the time and place being depicted, this book is the story of Jay Cooke's attempt to build a second transcontinental railroad, known as the Northern Pacific. Present readers may recognize its successor, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad that just happens to be the largest private landholder in the United States. An integral part of the story is the creation of Yellowstone National Park, the forced Canadian-British effort to build the Canadian Pacific transcontinental railroad, the Panic of 1873, the instigation of the Great Sioux War, and most interestingly, the link between Cooke and George Armstrong Custer that brought him back from the South and, as is said, the rest is history. This is a worthy addition to both national and regional history.

A Tough Comparison...

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Mr. Lubetkin's work is well researched and well written. He's able to weave a narrative together that brings the beginning of the Gilded Age to the Indian Wars and railroad construction... frankly, I had never made the connection between the Northern Pacific and Sitting Bull until I read this book. However, the final conclusions made me question the depth of the research. Lubetkin identifies the completion of the Northern Pacific several years later, and its competition with the Great Northern, whose surveyors "found" Marias Pass. There is no mention of the railroads' cooperation and attempted merger, nor the landmark Sumpreme Court case concerning Northern Securities and the creation of the ICC. Oh yes, and with reference to the previous review of the map quality, it would have been nice had the book included a larger map or two of the entire proposed routes. I still believe Pierre Berton's The Last Spike (Canadian Pacific) to be the standard against all railroad construction history books should be measured. If Berton rates a 10, this book is an 8.

If it is Great history you are after, buying this book isn't a gamble

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Author John Lubetkin has done an excellent job pulling together a widely diverse stockpile of sources and developing in-depth and unique look at the ill-fated attempt to construct the Northern Pacific Railroad in the early 1870s as America's second transcontinental rail link. Other books in the past have extracted the best-known portion of the series of events that constitute this story, namely Custer's 1873 Yellowstone Expedition as recounted in biographies of Custer and Sitting Bull as well as works from the late Larry Frost and John Carroll. The strength of Lubetkin's work lies in its all inconclusive disection of Jay Cooke and his Northern Plains Railroad dream which in no ways detracts from the military events that many of us find so compelling. In the late 1860s, Cooke had reached the apex of America's banking world, having financed the Union war effort in the Civil War, funding that was crucial in the ultimate victory. He backed the dream, dormant since its 1864 charter, of creating the Northern Pacific Railroad running from Duluth, Minnesota across Dakota Territory, through Montana, Idaho, and ending in the Pacific Northwest. The author's engaging style and in-depth research combine as he takes us back in time to the full context of the Gilded Age. We witness the brilliant Cooke as he ably finances his dream through repeated bond sales but the reality of what was being paid for soon begins to take its toil--poor management, gross overspending and corruption by those under Cooke, the unanticipated engineering challenges of laying a railroad through Minnesota's boggy, swampy terrain and, ultimately, the will of the the Lakota in resisting the railroad through their prime hunting grounds. History is fortunate that former Confederate General Tom Rosser was the chief engineer on the 1871 Whistler Expedition and the 1872 Rosser-Stanley Eastern Yellowstone Expedition as well as served at the start of the 1873 Expedition where he was reunited with former West Point classmate, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer. The author has delved deep into Rosser's diaries and correspondence from the manuscript repository holdings of the University of Virginia. For those like myself with an interest in the Indian Wars, the large section of this book devoted to these expeditions will prove compelling. An entire chapter is devoted to the 1872 Battle of Poker Flats and is absoluelty fascinating, especially the description of Sitting Bull's calculated act of courage of sitting on the ground, smoking his pipe as soldier's bullets failed to hit him as the battle concluded. All of this culminates with the 1873 Expedition which proved necessary since staunch Lakota resistance prevented the 1872 foray from completing the survey. The author argues that Eastern newspaper coverage of the intractable Lakotas begin to slowly but surely unnerve Eastern investors who became more and more concerned over the feasiblity of a railroad through hostile territory, a concern that would explode in September 1873 with the worst possible results. The military responded to the 1872 difficulties by sending Custer's 7th Cavalry to the Northern Plains, thus giving the 1873 survey an offensive capability lacking in the infantry companies. This act also placed Custer and his regiment into the heart of the most untamed portion of the country where Custer's 1876 demise would carry him and the 7th Cavalry beyond the realm of history and into legend. Separate chapters on Custer's August 4, 1873 battle near the Yellowstone/Tongue River confluence and the larger battle a week later near the Big Horn/Yellowstone junction do full justice to these events as well as ably demonstrate Custer's ability in Indian warfare. Readers will be somewhat surprised as well as enlightened by the more positive picture of General David Stanley, Custer's superior on the expedition, as he has generally been written off as a hopeless drunk. As this book reveals though, he was able to command effectively when the situation demanded and there is far more to him than my previous knowledge had encompassed. The book concludes with the return of the 1873 Expedition, the final survey complete but its results of little use until the end of the decade when the railroad was finally completed by a Northern Pacific under different management. For in September 1873, judgement day arrived for both Jay Cooke and Company as well as the U.S. economy as a "Panic" was unleashed on Wall Street, numerous banks, including Cooke's, failed and work on the Northern Pacific ground to a halt, dragging the nation into the depths of a depression that at least one economic historian has judged as second only to the 1929-1932 Great Depression. The author makes the argument that the reports of Custer's two battles, despite their small size and the success of Custer and his regiment, were the last straw in undermining investor confidence in the safety of the area that the railroad was trying to cross. Excellent and numerous maps by Vicki Trego Hill are included throughout this book and their quality is such that even the most difficult to please cartographer will be satisfied. If there is anything that the author can be faulted on, it is for not including more of the William Pywell photographs from the 1873 expedition but I have to remind myself that this book is on the entire Northern Pacific Railroad effort, not just the Custer expedition. For those wishing to view these photographs as well as gain additional, in-depth, excellent insight into the 1873 Expedition, see Lawrence Frost's CUSTER'S 7TH CAVALRY AND THE CAMPAIGN OF 1873, out of print but available wherever fine rare books are sold, including Amazon as of this writing.