The railroad boom, especially in the West, brought to life characters as untamed and unpredictable as unsettled America. One such figure was called "the wild jackass of the prairies". He was railroad magnate Ignatius Donnelly, intellectual, madman, warrior and a leading figure in the settlement of the American West. Railroads, Robbers and Rebels presents an entertaining rediscovery of Donnelly and his contemporaries, the men and women who charted new territory during the great American railroad expansion of the early 1800s. For the first time, take a close look at the fascinating people who knit together a new country from steel rails.