In 1956, the era of tail-finned cars and nineteen-cents-a-gallon gasoline, the Missouri Pacific Railroad emerged on the corporate scene as a private company after twenty-three years in a receivership. In its past lay a collapsed rail empire, a sensational bankruptcy struggle that shattered dreams and betrayed trusts, an emotional battle over stockholders' interests, and the flamboyant maneuvers of the railroad's overseers. In its future lay two computerized, merger-dominated decades in which the railroad business would serve as a classic example of a tradition-bound industry forced to adapt to "future shock." The transition from crippled line to prime property would become, as one politician later put it, "a lawyers' paradise, and a security-holders' nightmare."

H. Craig Miner, using a wealth of oral and written primary sources, with the cooperation of the company and complete access to records and personnel, describes and critically analyzes, the physical and financial revolution of the Missouri Pacific.