1763-1848

Recounts the first attempt of John Jacob Astor and President Thomas Jefferson in 1810 to send advance parties both overland and by sea to settle the western Coast of North America, in what is now Oregon, and the ultimate failure of the expedition.

In the early twentieth century, four sisters and their widowed mother, a famed spiritualist, travel from New York to London, and as the Titanic conveys them and their acquaintances, journalist W.T. Stead, scientist Nikola Tesla, and industrialist John Jacob Astor, home, Tesla's inventions will either doom or save them all.

Shares the life stories of six American men whose names continue to be associated with wealth and power long after their deaths, including Joseph P. Kennedy, John Jacob Astor, Henry Ford, Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie.

Introduces John Jacob Astor, who came to the United States in 1784, began work as a clerk for a fur trader, later went into business for himself, and died in 1848 as the richest man in America.