John H. McFadden and His Age: Cotton and Culture in Philadelphia is the first biography dedicated to John McFadden (1850-1921), Philadelphia's-if not the country's-grandest cotton king of his time and collector and donor of an important grouping of British paintings now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Tracing his life in both England and Philadelphia, this book not only examines how McFadden accumulated his wealth and art collection, but also illuminates his roles as a notable philanthropist, a rare-book collector, a real-estate developer, and a museum administrator, as well as the founder of possibly the world's first multimedia news cafâe. Situating him within the context of Philadelphia's late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century major players, McFadden is revealed as the city's unofficial arts czar, overseeing-and often ruling- many of its foremost cultural institutions"--