Frank Cowperwood, a disgraced robber baron, has just been released from prison. After some canny investments pay off, he decides to head west to Chicago, where he can rebuild his fortune and his good name. He takes his mistress, Aileen, with him, and quickly learns how to use his wealth and machine politics to take over the Chicago streetcar system.

The second entry in Dreiser’s Trilogy of Desire , The Titan continues the dramatized story of a real life streetcar tycoon, with the character of Cowperwood standing in for the historical figure of Charles Yerkes. Dreiser uses Yerkes’ story to illustrate the magnifying and corrupting influence that money can have on the lustful and the covetous: can society benefit from a powerful man who, yes, does deliver some streetcars, but whose only real interest is sex, money, art, power, and glory? While Cowperwood seems to succeed again and again at amassing wealth and power, he too often finds himself unhappy, while those around him are laid to waste by his unbridled ambition and capital.