From the first days of the US, a battle over money raged between the democrats, who wanted cheap money and feared the concentration of financial interests in the hands of a few, and the capitalists, who sought the soundness of a national bank and the profits that came with it. In telling this story, best-selling historian H.W. Brands focuses on five money men : Alexander Hamilton, Nicholas Biddle, Jay Cooke, Jay Gould and J. P. Morgan.