As much an American success story as a story about America itself, the saga of Fred Harvey and the Harvey Houses is a captivating tale of entrepreneurial innovation, hard work, and resilience that left an indelible mark on our nation’s culture and history. To a surprising degree, we still live in an America of Fred Harvey’s making. But just who was Fred Harvey?

To answer that question, award-winning journalist Stephen Fried has recreated a life that reads like a Horatio Alger rags-to-riches story. Fried is an investigative journalist and essayist, and an adjunct professor of journalism at Columbia University.