J. C. Corcoran gives a "behind the scenes" look into local broadcasting and his wild ride up and down the St. Louis radio dial.

A hostage situation in a barroom in the little town of Big Oaks, Arizona is the beginning of Tracey Dodd’s journey into the wilderness. The three men, who took the hostage are captured and arrested by Tracey Dodd and Frank Yazzi. A few days later they escape and attempt to hold up the bank. Tracey’s fiancé walks in on the holdup and ends up in the hospital in a coma. Tracey chases the three fugitives across the Arizona wilderness, and before it’s over, three more people are shot and a very close friend of Tracey’s is brutally murdered. Tracey Dodd turns his back on God and swears that he will send all three men straight to Hell.

"Before the Gilded Age is the first modern and thorough biography of William Wilson Corcoran (1798-1888), one of the nation's earliest and most successful political insiders, financiers, philanthropists, and shapers of the emerging cultural elite during the era before the Gilded Age. He was a college dropout (Georgetown College) who became one of the richest men in Washington. A controversial figure in his own time and ours, Corcoran was a masterful political "shapeshifter" whose chameleonlike ability to work both sides of the Mason-Dixon line during and after the Civil War enabled him to thrive seamlessly between sitting out the war in Europe while rumors of treason swirled around him and then returning to the capital after the Union victory. He was friendly with Robert E. Lee and William Tecumseh Sherman; Jefferson Davis and Daniel Webster. He owned at least two individuals and worked to end Home Rule, disenfranchising the voters of Washington, DC, and ending Reconstruction in the District. He was one of the earliest consistent practitioners of the much-reviled activity of lobbying. And he devised the strategy to leverage public debt to finance the US prosecution of the Mexican-American War. Yet he also played a key role in stabilizing and merchandizing US financial securities at home and abroad, created a bank that remained independent for 175 years (Riggs Bank), and founded the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Corcoran's failings are examined along with his contributions to some of the major developments in finance and philanthropy of his era"--