John D. Rockefeller, Sr.--history's first billionaire and the patriarch of America's most famous dynasty--is an icon whose true nature has eluded three generations of historians. Now Ron Chernow, the National Book Award-winning biographer of the Morgan and Warburg banking families, gives us a history of the mogul "etched with uncommon objectivity and literary grace . . . as detailed, balanced, and psychologically insightful a portrait of the tycoon as we may ever have" (Kirkus Reviews). Titan is the first full-length biography based on unrestricted access to Rockefeller's exceptionally rich trove of papers. A landmark publication full of startling revelations, the book will indelibly alter our image of this most enigmatic capitalist.
Born the son of a flamboyant, bigamous snake-oil salesman and a pious, straitlaced mother, Rockefeller rose from rustic origins to become the world's richest man by creating America's most powerful and feared monopoly, Standard Oil. Branded "the Octopus" by legions of muckrakers, the trust refined and marketed nearly 90 percent of the oil produced in America.
Rockefeller was likely the most controversial businessman in our nation's history. Critics charged that his empire was built on unscrupulous tactics: grand-scale collusion with the railroads, predatory pricing, industrial espionage, and wholesale bribery of political officials. The titan spent more than thirty years dodging investigations until Teddy Roosevelt and his trustbusters embarked on a marathon crusade to bring Standard Oil to bay.
While providing abundant new evidence of Rockefeller's misdeeds, Chernow discards the stereotype of the cold-blooded monster to sketch an unforgettably human portrait of a quirky, eccentric original. A devout Baptist and temperance advocate, Rockefeller gave money more generously--his chosen philanthropies included the Rockefeller Foundation, the University of Chicago, and what is today Rockefeller University--than anyone before him. Titan presents a finely nuanced portrait of a fascinating, complex man, synthesizing his public and private lives and disclosing numerous family scandals, tragedies, and misfortunes that have never before come to light.
John D. Rockefeller's story captures a pivotal moment in American history, documenting the dramatic post-Civil War shift from small business to the rise of giant corporations that irrevocably transformed the nation. With cameos by Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst, Jay Gould, William Vanderbilt, Ida Tarbell, Andrew Carnegie, Carl Jung, J. Pierpont Morgan, William James, Henry Clay Frick, Mark Twain, and Will Rogers, Titan turns Rockefeller's life into a vivid tapestry of American society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is Ron Chernow's signal triumph that he narrates this monumental saga with all the sweep, drama, and insight that this giant subject deserves.
From the Hardcover edition.
Jack Beatty
This book is a triumph of the art of biography....[it] has an eerie timeliness. -- The New York Times
Newsday
A captivating biography of one the most famous men in American business history.
The New York Times
Titan has many of the best attributes of a novel…Wonderfully fluent and compelling.
Book World The Washington Post
Chernow's portrait of Rockefeller, an eccentric on a heroic scale as well as a genius, is the best biography of the man so far.
Robert Caro
A....[O]ne of the great American biographies....A triumph, a brilliant, riveting, and monumental portrait of a fascinating human being and his age.
—Time Magazine
Financial Times
Chernow has confirmed his reputation as a great business historian.
Library Journal
Industry consolidation, enormous new wealth, journalistic muckraking, government antitrust. Sound familiar? Reviewers enthusiastically praised this monumental work about the founder of Standard Oil, which serves as a useful reminder that what happens today in the business world often has strong roots in the past. (LJ 3/15/98)
NY Times Book Review
A large-scale, sustained narrative portrait of the founding father, free of visible ideological predispositions.
Jackson Lears
[A] conscientious and thorough biography....the balance tips toward an emphasis on Rockefeller's benevolence....Chernow's book is a masterful synthesis of research and writing, [but] its frequently celebratory tone [comes at] a time, afer all, when CEOs pose as culture heroes....Still, Titan is...an extraordinary achievment in biography. -- The New Republic
Wall Street Journal
Important and impressive.
The Washington Post
The best biography of Rockefeller so far.
The New York Times
Wonderfully fluent and irresistibly compelling.
Robert A. Caro
...[O]ne of the great American biographies....A triumph, a brilliant, riveting, and monumental portrait of a fascinating human being and his age. -- Time Magazine
Time Magazine
One of the great American biographies.
Kirkus Reviews
The archetypal American institution-builder in industry, philanthropy, and the family dynasty bearing his name is etched with uncommon objectivity and literary grace by National Book Award winning business historian Chernow (The Death of the Banker, 1997). 'Silence, mystery, and evasion' perpetually enveloped the founder of the world's first great industrial trust, enabling him to crush rivals to his Standard Oil Co. The same cocoon presented daunting obstacles to earlier chroniclers of John D. Rockefeller Sr., both detractors (crusading muckraker Ida Tarbell) and supporters (Allan Nevins). Greater access to family archives, including a 1,700-page interview given by Rockefeller in retirement, enable Chernow to tear at this membrance of artifice and to offer as detailed, balanced, and psychologically insightful a portrait of the tycoon as we may ever have.
Chernow traces Rockefeller's contradictory impulses toward greed and godliness to his parents. His father, who abandoned the family for years at a time to ply rustic innocents with patent medicines, left him with shameful secrets (e.g., bigamy and a rape indictment) and acquisitive instincts; his mother instilled a devotion to the Baptist faith that manifested itself in philanthropy. Chernow is careful to deny some of the hoariest myths of Rockefeller demonology, to detail his managerial gifts, and to underscore his crimes (his alliance with railroads in the shell organization the South Improvement Company involved rebates, insider intelligence, and 'grand-scale collusion such as American industry had never witnessed').
Above all, he offers a figure abounding in paradox: the prototypical monopolist who sought toeliminate what he saw as wasteful competition, only to spark an antitrust suit that forced the dissolution of his company; a homeopathy advocate who funded medical research that marginalized this form of medicine; and a tightly wound, self-possessed, despised businessman who in his 40-year retirement displayed a joy in play and a talent for charming reporters, winning the affection of the world.