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.

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.

I admit that I bought the book to learn more about someone who was once the world's richest individual. I was neither interested in Rockefeller nor in the history of business. After reading this book, I must confess to being interested in both.
Chernow has done an excellent job examining several fascinating aspects of Rockefeller's life. The first, which figures largely throughout the book, is the disparity between Rockefeller's admirable piety and his almost sinister drive to attain wealth. Another is Rockefeller's relationship with his parents, especially his vagabond father. A third aspect, which was entirely unknown to me prior to reading this book, is the extent of Rockefeller's legacy, particularly that related to philanthropy in medicine and education. This last point ties in nicely with Chernow's examination into the lives of Rockefeller's children, especially John Jr., who inherits most of his father's wealth and carries on in his father's philanthropic footsteps rather than in business. Of all these areas, Chernow's focus on Rockefeller's rationalization of his business practices is the most engrossing. I'm a slow reader and it took me nearly a month to complete this book. But I cherish the hours I spent!

As an aside, I couldn't help but think of Microsoft as I read this book!

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.

Chernow, author of The Warburgs and the National Book Award-winning The House of Morgan, strays somewhat from his trademark biographies in this trio of essays. True, two essays, "J. Pierpont Morgan" and "The Warburgs," revisit past scholarship, but both are in the service of his reprinted lecture, "The Death of the Banker." Even in such a brief volume, Chernow manages to reveal much about the personalities of the Rothschilds, the Morgans and others and to offer telling, entertaining anecdotes. For example, Chernow tracks the origins of the "cold call" to a broker in the 1920s who "telephoned one number and was told the party he was trying to reach was dead. Without missing a beat, the young broker asked, `Well, can I please speak to his next of kin?'" This is the background that allows Chernow to chronicle the dramatic shifts in the banking and brokerage community over the past century. There is no longer a clear demarcation between a banker and a brokerage'as evidenced by this year's merger of Morgan Stanley and Dean Witter. Furthermore, Chernow says the old antagonism between Wall Street execs and plain folks no longer really applies: "Main Street can no longer clash too vigorously with Wall Street since the two sides have grown indistinguishable from the rise of giant brokerage chains and mutual fund groups." For anyone interested in the world behind the business-page headlines, this is the book to read.

Brief, to the point and informative. A great anthology of how the financial world got from where it was to where it is now. Chernow is a master financial historian.

In this 1993 National Book Award winner, Chernow presents a sweeping yet intimate historical saga of an extraordinary German-Jewish banking family whose roots go back to the 18th century. Richly documented by Warburg family archival and oral sources, the study captures both the glory and folly of this family of grandees, whose remarkable impact on the world of international finance, politics, culture, philanthropy, and Zionism continues to resonate. With delicious detail spiced by psychological ruminations and sensitivity, with penetrating insight conveyed by sometimes sparkling writing, Chernow focuses on the individual heroes of the Warburg clan--especially Mak, Felix, Paul, Fritz, Aby, Eric, James, and Sir Seigmund--and deftly portrays the meteoric rise of the dynasty, its fall under the Nazis, postwar rebirth, and the ultimately futile struggle of most Warburgs to maintain a Jewish identity. This is biography on an epic scale. General readers, undergraduates, and above.

Ron Chernow narrates with panache the riveting tribulations of the Warburgs, a prominent Jewish banking dynasty emerging in Germany in the sixteenth century. The author does an outstanding job in switching back and forth between the Alsterufer Warburgs and the Mittelweg Warburgs, the two rivaling branches of the Warburgs. Ron Chernow indeed vividly recasts the numerous actors of that saga against the economic, political and social backdrop of their time. The author brilliantly helps his readers understand the painful dilemma that many German Jews, keener and keener on assimilation into Germany, faced especially under the Weimar Republic and then under Nazism. Ron Chernow also underlines how several Warburgs emigrating outside Germany had a positive influence on the unfolding of some key domestic and overseas events. Ironically, M.M. Warburg & Co., the German cradle of the banking dynasty that Nazism and then internal infighting almost torpedoed with success, is the only one to remain independent today. M.M. Warburg & Co. is Germany's second largest private bank. S.G. Warburg is now part of Union Bank of Switzerland while Warburg Pincus, successor of E.M. Warburg, belongs to Credit Suisse.

The history of the Warburg family is a amazingly tragic, hopeful and truimphant one. Ron Chernow describes the tight rope that Jews trod, at different stages of world issues, in a captive and sensitive manner. The author describes the begining of the banking dynasty and progresses through each genration leaving a unremovable image of each member. With a few exceptions, for every successful and optimistic father there is a unsure and detached son. For every mother who was a perfectionist and hardworking, there was a loyal, ambitious son. Not being Jewish, but understanding the feeling of not being fully assimilated in my own society, i personally appreciated this balancing act. However i believe that the issues of their religion and their trade, whilst very significant, play a complementary backdrop to which is essentially a superb insight into a diverse and ambitious family. One which, i think we can all relate to. I'd recommend it for all readers out there.