Ron Chernow

The author draws on Rockefeller's own papers to provide a biography of the legendary oilman, capitalist, and philanthropist

The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr

Titan

Timeo Williams

Rockefeller on Napoleon - "He was a human being and virile because he came direct from the ranks of the people. There was none of the stagnant blood of nobility or royalty in his veins."

This bio is a first in a journey of looking into the lives of highly successful people. I got a primer on how wealth travels from generation to generation and the habits that lead to better outcomes. I loved to learn about other influential figures - Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and their connections to Rockefeller and an understanding of the times. 

Also insightful - Chevron, Mobil, Exxon, were all former fragments of Standard Oil. The names of several higher institutions came about from the great men of this time period.

National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist From the acclaimed, award-winning author of Alexander Hamilton: here is the essential, endlessly engrossing biography of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.—the Jekyll-and-Hyde of American capitalism. In the course of his nearly 98 years, Rockefeller was known as both a rapacious robber baron, whose Standard Oil Company rode roughshod over an industry, and a philanthropist who donated money lavishly to universities and medical centers. He was the terror of his competitors, the bogeyman of reformers, the delight of caricaturists—and an utter enigma. Drawing on unprecedented access to Rockefeller’s private papers, Chernow reconstructs his subjects’ troubled origins (his father was a swindler and a bigamist) and his single-minded pursuit of wealth. But he also uncovers the profound religiosity that drove him “to give all I could”; his devotion to his father; and the wry sense of humor that made him the country’s most colorful codger. Titan is a magnificent biography—balanced, revelatory, elegantly written.

The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.

Keven Wang

A good overview of America’s first monopolies

Wynn Netherland

I picked up this book because I wanted to understand better the rise of the world's richest man and his legacy — a business legacy that lives on in corporate logos we see every day and a family legacy that extended all the way to the Lieutenant Governor's office of my home state of Arkansas.

Taking nothing away from Chernow's meticulous research and understated storytelling, the actual life of John D. Rockefeller seems rather dull. There was the ongoing tension between his Northern Baptist faith and his desire to accumulate and steward wealth, but the far more entertaining portions of the book follow Rockefeller's unresolved tension with his bigamist father and conflicts with Ida Tarbell and Teddy Roosevelt.

Perhaps the book's greatest value is its telling of, primarily through the life of one man, the transformation of American culture and mainline Protestantism. From Moody and Fosdick to Jung, Rockefeller, his family, or his surrogates were riding the same streams of the oncoming wave of Progressivism at the turn of the last century.

Titan The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr

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