Tycoon’s War: How Cornelius Vanderbilt...

The 1980s civil war between Contras and Sandinistas was only America's most recent intervention in Nicaragua. In the 1850s an American called William Walker, backed by a small army of adventurers, made himself president of Nicaragua. Factions within the country opposed him, as did his Central American neighbors and ultimately the richest man in the United States, Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, whose scheme to build a canal across the country led to Walker's death by firing squad. Australian writer Stephen Dando-Collins reconstructs this little-known historical footnote as a page-turning history lesson in greed and folly as he recounts the sordid, fascinating and true tale.