Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Godfrey married Lucy Avery in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, despite the grave qualms of her family..." (more)
Key Phrases: travel phobia, benevolent trust, railroad rebates, Standard Oil, New York, Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Ron Chernow, whose previous books have taken on the Morgan and Warburg financial empires, now turns his attention to the patriarch of the Rockefeller dynasty. John D. was history's first recorded billionaire and one of the most controversial public figures in America at the turn of the 20th century. Standard Oil--which he always referred to as the result of financial "cooperation," never as a "cartel" or a "monopoly"--controlled at its peak nearly 90 percent of the United States oil industry. Rockefeller drew sharp criticism, as well as the attention of federal probes, for business practices like underpricing his competitors out of the market and bribing politicians to secure his dominant market share.

While Chernow amply catalogs Rockefeller's misdeeds, he also presents the tycoon's human side. Making use of voluminous business correspondence, as well as rare transcripts of interviews conducted when Rockefeller was in his late 70s and early 80s, Chernow is able to present his subject's perspective on his own past, re-creating a figure who has come down to us as cold and unfeeling as a shrewd, dryly humorous man who had no inner misgivings about reconciling his devout religious convictions with his fiscal acquisitiveness. The story of John D. Rockefeller Sr. is, in many ways, the story of America between the Civil War and the First World War, and Chernow has told that story in magnificently fascinating depth and style.

From 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.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 800 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (May 5, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679438084
• ISBN-13: 978-0679438083
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 7.2 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (129 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #318,662 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deep, impartial, intelligent and thorough., October 10, 1999

By	SL-N/1973 (UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (Paperback)

As a frequent visitor to New York, I'd often wondered who the "Rockefeller" of the Rockefeller Plaza was, and how he made his fortune. I bought this book with an air of caution, as biographies of highly successfull people can be biased either towards patronising hero-worship, or venomous character assasination. I needn't have worried, as Ron Chernow's extensive, thorough and even-handed book portrays not only JDR's progress through and beyond his 98 years, but also America's consequent development.

The personal conflict between hard-edged business practices and religious ethics are deftly portrayed, and left for the reader to decide wether or not Rockefeller was trying to bring stability and structure to a highly unpredictable market place, or being an un-controllable corporate steam-roller.

The book is not just a study of the incredible business career of John D Rockefeller. To take us some of the way towards understanding the individual, Ron Chernow allows time to give a fascinating look at the early days of not only the parents and grandparents, but also the life styles and factors from before his birth that would so influence the life of JDR. The book covers the years of philanthropy showing how a vast fortune in the right hands can be used effectively.

It's an excellent book, well researched and well written. I learned a great deal from it, and have a tremendous respect for not only the subject of the book, but also the author. I'd recommend "TITAN" to everyone.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finest business biography I've ever read, October 11, 2000

By	Mark Edward Bachmann (Westport, CT USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

While John Rockefeller is one of the most famous and influential men in American history, he has nonetheless come down to Americans in caricature: steely-faced, secretive, greedy, crafty, and ruthless. He was certainly all these, but Ron Chernow has in this book laid bare for us the rest of the story, which is complex, exhilarating, quirky, and rich in paradox. A business genius, Rockefeller was a pivotal figure in developing the modern corporation as the organizational vehicle for controlling massive capital-intensive operations. Recognizing early on that an empire of the scale he envisioned could not be run effectively in the autocratic style still common in his day, he rarely made important decisions without seeking debate and achieving a common mind among his key associates, foreshadowing the "consensus-management" style typical of large-scale enterprise today. His most flagrant sin, and the one that fueled the political backlash against Standard Oil, was the ruthlessness with which he crushed competitors. However, even here he played by the cold-blooded rules as he saw them and was rarely vindictive. When advantageous to himself, as it often was, he extended the olive branch to vanquished rivals, buying out their companies and drawing them into his organization, making at least some of them richer than they could have been on their own. This was not generosity but the inexorable mechanism whereby he expanded Standard Oil into a monopoly. Nevertheless, generosity - paradoxical as it seems - was in fact central to Rockefeller's life. Chernow traces Rockefeller's philanthropy back to his deepest roots as the dutiful son of an intensely religious Baptist mother. We seem him tithing to his church and devoting his time and attention to charity and "good works" already at the start of his career when he was a salaried bookkeeper struggling to put food on his family's table. He made his fortune relatively early in what proved to be a very long life, and he gradually backed away from active management of his company, focusing his colossal energies for most of his mature years on his philanthropic enterprises. There is a wealth of personal material in this book that makes Rockefeller very human, albeit eccentric. His passion as an old man for golf, for example, was almost comical. He despised high-society and ostentation, and socialized mostly with business cronies, family members and people from the smallish Baptist church he was devoted to his entire life. One of the more fascinating threads concerns his ne'er-do-well father, an itinerant huckster and small-time swindler who largely abandoned his family to near-poverty, but had a habit of re-appearing at odd times througout his son's life. Chernow leads us to speculate that the fanatical discipline and devotion to duty which drove Rockefeller might have been a reaction formation against his irresponsible paterfamilias. Who knows? Like all biographies, even the best ones, this book in the end fails to "explain" it's subject, and if anything Rockefeller emerges from it more enigmatic than ever. But the book brings him alive and left me with the desire to know more about him, always the mark of a top-notch biography. That's what this one is and I highly recommend it.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The parallels to Gates and MSFT are an interesting subtext, December 7, 1999

By	John J. Wood (San Francisco) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (Paperback)

I am in awe of Ron Chernow for writing a long and thorough biography that I absolutely could not put down. Rarely have I finished such a long book in such a short period of time. Chernow manages to show how complex Rockefeller's personality and motives, were, and he helps us to avoid the all-too-easy cliches about the rich and powerful. Yet while revealing the complexity, he is never boring, didactic, or long-winded.

I found it interesting to compare Rockefeller and Standard Oil to Bill Gates and Microsoft. Both men are powerful, rich, misunderstood, certain that their actions are ethical and good for their country and the economy, and dedicated to helping those who are less fortunate. Both men vow(ed) to give away most of their fortune. Both have been attacked by their own government, and villified in the press. Both dominate media coverage of business. And, like Rockefeller, Gates is a brilliant strategist who defies easy cliches and shallow descriptions. You can see goodness in either man, and you can also see evil. The beauty of Chernow's biography is that he allows us to see both sides of Rockefeller, without ever landing on either side himself.

Regardless of my thoughts on the parallels, I highly recommend this bio. Four friends are receiving it as their Christmas gift from me.