Empire Builders: An Illustrated History of the Rise and Fall of Cleveland's Van Sweringen Brothers

Empire Builders tells the story of Oris P. and Mantis J. Sweringen, two brothers from Wooster, Ohio, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Although they were born into abject poverty, Oris was an extraordinary visionary who, with the help of his devoted younger brother, amassed a vast fortune in real estate and railroad developments. Their major breakthrough came in 1913 with the establishment of Shaker Heights, an affluent garden suburb connected by a brand-new interurban r...