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This text constructs a historical inquiry into the rise of the large publicly traded American corporation. Departing from the received wisdom, which sees the corporation as the result of technological development and market growth that required greater efficiency, the book focuses on political, social and institutional processes governed by the dynamics of power. The author shows how the corporation started as a quasi-public device used by governments to create and administer public services like turnpikes and canals and then how it germinated within a system of stock markets, brokerage houses and investment banks into a mechanism for the organization of railroads. Finally, and most particularly, the author analyzes its flowering into the realm of manufacturing, when, at the turn of the century, many of the same giants that still dominate the American economic landscape today were created.