Paperback: In this endlessly engrossing book, National Book Award-winning biographer Ron Chernow devotes his penetrating powers of scholarship and insight to the Jekyll and Hyde of American capitalism.
In the course of his nearly 98 years, John D Rockefeller Sr 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 subject's 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 family; and the wry sense of humour that made him the country's most colourful codger.
Titan (1998) is a magnificent biography - balanced, revelatory, and elegantly written. It has been named New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, Business Week's Best Business Book of the Year, Time Magazine's Book of the Year and the Economist's Best Biography of the Year.
About the author: Ron Chernow's first book, The House of Morgan (1990), won the National Book Award, the Ambassador Award for the year's best study of American culture, and was named one of the 100 best nonfiction books of the century by the Modern Library. His second book, The Warburgs (1993), won the Eccles Prize as the Best Business Book of 1993 and was also selected by the American Library Association as one of that year's best nonfiction books.
In reviewing his recent collection of essays, The Death of the Banker (1997), The New York Times called the author "as elegant an architect of monumental histories as we've seen in decades" and chose the paperback original as one of the year's Notable Books.
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