Brittle book jacket - heavy chipped edges Shelfwear on cover GP Putnam’s Sons, 1956, 317 pages Second printing Here is one of the most important lacets of American life laid bare by a master hand. From the days of Howells's Rise of Silas Lapham through Dreiser's Titan to Cash McCall and The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, the world of big business has fascinated novelists. But almost always the emphasis has been on high-on the captains of industry. Here in The Empire is the world of big business, not as revealed by the tycoons who run it, but as seen by its effect on the little men who compose the vast Empire, the cogs which make the wheels of industry go round. We see these men entering the firm, feeling their way to success and promotions, sometimes cracking under the strain of competition and office politics, often failing because of outside pressures, and occasionally in the end (and at considerable cost to themselves) making the grade and becoming established as Big Wheels of the great System they represent.