Martin Dressler is the son of cigar maker, born in late nineteenth-century New York. As Martin approaches manhood, it is rapidly clear that his ambitions stretch far further than inheriting his father's shop, as he moves first to take a job in a hotel, then to open a restaurant, and rapidly ascends to become a builder of hotels of his own. He is a classic entrepreneur, a young man who has the audacity to make his dreams - and the American Dream - come true. But when Martin sets out to build the Grand Cosmos, this mesmerizing novel finally exposes the ambiguity of the American dream and the perils and wonder of human ambition and the human imagination.