The Death of the Banker: The Decline and Fall of the Great Financial Dynasties and the Triumph of the Small Investor (Vintage) (Paperback)

by Ron Chernow (Author) "When I prophesy the death of the banker, I fear that instead of provoking weeping and lamentations, the news will be greeted by the heartless..." (more)
Key Phrases: banker power, interlocking partnerships, wholesale lending, Wall Street, Pierpont Morgan, Morgan Stanley (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Ron Chernow, the National Book Award-winning author of two astoundingly comprehensive biographies of prominent American financiers, now examines the ultimate decline of such power brokers and the corresponding rise of international money in The Death of the Banker. This surprisingly concise (but no less illuminating) volume opens with an expanded version of a speech on "the dwindling role of the financial intermediary" that he presented early in 1997; it concludes with condensed versions of his earlier books on J. P. Morgan and the Warburgs that show how the essence of financial power has changed in the 20th century.

From Library Journal
Chernow revisits here a period he explored in depth in earlier works: the 19th-century golden age of merchant banking and the likes of J.P. Morgan (The House of Morgan, LJ 2/1/90) in the United States and the Warburgs (The Warburgs, LJ 9/1/93) in Europe. His work grew out of a lecture in which he maintained that "the salient fact of 20th-century finance will be the sharp erosion of banker power." What he meant was the passage of "relational" banking, where bankers had ongoing relationships with their clients, to a "transactional" type of banking, where all bankers are competing for the same work. To justify his point, he here profiles both the Morgan and Warburg banks in two separate essays. While both are well written, one wonders why he's reinvented the wheel. His two previous books on Morgan and Warburg are brilliant and masterly, yet his condensation of their lives for his new book, while highly readable, makes the reader hunger for more. Appropriate for larger business collections.?Richard Drezen, Washington Post News Research Ctr., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1 edition (July 14, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375700374
• ISBN-13: 978-0375700378
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #258,967 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars As much as you can get from such a small book you shall get, August 23, 1999

By	[e-mail] (Munich, Germany) - See all my reviews

Death of the banker by Ron Chernow

Disappointing when you know the Warburgs, but anyway worthwile reading when it is read as intro to US Banking history. The book is an enlargement of a speech held by the author in earlier times. Thus, it centers in the first part strongly on the development and undevelopment of banking in USA. But reader beware, the title is misleading. Chernow really envisages the personal banker, the likes of Warburg or in particular J.P. Morgan and his power. So the power of banks has shifted, but will never expire as the author himself admits. The short stories of the lifes of the Warburgs and Morgan are nice first reading, but lack depth and analysis. Recommendation : If you lack time, read it, otherwise you are better off with the authors more precise works.

Dr. Rudolf C. King

CEO princeandprince.com

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars an introduction to the history of merchant banks, August 28, 2006

By	lector avidus (USA) - See all my reviews

Ron Chernow, who has degrees in English literature from Yale and Cambridge, has written excellent biographies of the Rockefeller, Morgan and Warburg families. In this book, which essentially is a spin-off of his other books, he explains how the economic niche that JP Morgan and the Warburgs inhabited, that of the middleman between the very wealthy and corporations and aspiring entrepreneurs, has disappeared in today's world of telephones, fax machines, the internet, the SEC, and mutual funds and venture capital.

This book grew out of a talk he delivered on the topic, with a brief summary of the Morgans and the Warburgs appended. Oftentimes talks given at conventions are in part written to fill time; this seems to be the case with this book; anyone with a bachelors in economics could summarize it on a page or two without any loss of meaningful detail, the second part is a short look at the lives of the subjects of his other books. Stylistically, the focus is on the use of elegant English, to such an extent that the book suffers under it. There certainly is a place for beautiful English in historical works, as anyone who has read Macaulay's History of England knows, but not as its own reward.

Those who want to familiarize themselves with the economic history of the great merchant bankers in an unthreatening way free of all too much economic jargon will greatly enjoy this book. PhD economists, on the other hand, will probably feel that Chernow ought to get to the point.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nice little introduction to the history of banking in the US, June 14, 2000

By	Peter McMahon (perth, australia) - See all my reviews

I was disappointed with Chernow's tome on the Morgans, partly because, as he states in this book, it lacked thematic content. I don't think Chernow is right about banking and finance generally becoming 'democratised', even if it is changing. Global finance is still controlled by a very few fund managers and bankers, albeit with an eye to the profit margin. It may be the populace's money, but they do not decide how it gets used, and this is the crucial power in our time. Nevertheless, this is a good introduction to the subject and always readable.