One of my colleagues likes to say that if a subject was worth one book, it was worth more than one. A comparison of two books on the development of New York City's manufacturing, commercial and financial elite demon-strates how differences in theoretical approaches, research materials and literary form can lead in significantly different directions. Beckert depicts the rise of the bourgeois class in the late nineteenth century with touches of tragedy and irony. Kessner's capitalists, while flawed, particularly in their mistreatment of labour, tend to come across as heroes who make America a dominant world power.