For a few years after the Civil War, New Yorker Sam Ward revelled in his reputation as the nation's preeminent lobbyist, representing anyone willing to pay his hefty fees as railroad barons and industrialists strove to reap the benefits of the expansion of government largesse. Kathryn Allamong Jacob's engagingly written biography focusses on this brief period in Ward's young life, but the most interesting aspects of her study lie in the relationship between her subject's career in Washington and his origins as the scion of one of Manhattan's first families.

The son of a wealthy banker, Ward graduated from Columbia before heading off to Europe to continue his studies, where his spendthrift ways (he burnt through the equivalent of $400,000 in the space of a few years) first became apparent. His carelessness with money hardly made him the ideal candidate to take on the family business after his father's death in 1839, and before long the firm was bankrupt. Despite marrying into the Astors – a shortlived union as his wife died in childbirth – he found himself penniless, and took ship for California during the Gold Rush in the forlorn hope of reclaiming his fortune. If he had lost his money, though, the cultural capital Ward acquired in his youth would be put to profitable use over the remainder of his life. In 1859, after serving on a diplomatic mission to Latin America, he arrived in Washington to represent the interests of the Paraguayan government, and after playing a minor role as a go-between and spy during the Civil War, he took to lobbying full time after the conflict. As a renowned raconteur and gourmand he had little difficulty ingratiating himself with the capital's political elite, and he exerted subtle pressure at his dining table for the interests he was paid to advocate.

Jacob clearly likes Ward, and it is understandable why. He comes across as a jovial, generous, if rather naive figure whose apparent refusal to directly buy votes set him apart from less scrupulous peers. But perhaps because she tells his life story so well she is sometimes reluctant to pause to consider the broader implications of his career. Towards the end of the study Jacob does defend Gilded Age lobbyists by pointing to their role as mediators between an increasingly complex society and the nation's lawmakers. This is a valid point, but what is striking is the extent to which this process of modernization (as she casts it) rested on the social practices of the antebellum elite. Ward's story stands out, indeed, as his background set him apart from the professional politicians and deal makers who supposedly shaped the destiny of national politics in the Gilded Age. Under him, the era appears less a raucous great barbeque and more a never-ending – and decidedly genteel – dinner party.