Book excerpt: Two brothers, as different as night and day: one, charming and ruthless, buys his way into Harvard, Wall Street, and high society; the other brother remains by his mother's side and makes his way to the top without the influence of money or prestige. Raised in separate worlds, these brothers are bound by a bitter rivalry for riches and power, but mostly, for the exciting, wildly captivating woman they fight all their lives to possess, a woman whose passion for one destroys her love for the other. Their story consumes an American century, spanning decades of splendor, struggle, upheaval, and war. It's an absorbing saga of innocent dreams and green desire corrupted by gilded temptation.