Book Review - Titan : The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow
18 August 2006I’ve recently finished reading Titan : The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow. It’s a lengthy biography of one of America’s greatest businessmen - John D. Rockefeller. For those of you unfamiliar with him, he’s a Gilded Age businessman who founded Standard Oil just after the Civil War. He gradually took control over all aspects of the oil business, which was then confined to Pennsylvania (the only known source of oil). Standard Oil became a giant monopoly, controlling about 90% of the oil business and causing a pretty dramatic lifestyle shift by providing commercially viable kerosene, a cheap source of light that allowed common people to stay up after dark for the first time. The monopoly eventually became reviled when the Progressive movement began pushing for trust-busting efforts and when journalists started looking into the unsavory business tactics used to establish the trust in the first place.
Rockefeller was a strange contradiction of a man - ruthless in business and yet genuinely pious, churchgoing, and generous with his money. Towards the end of his life, he had given away an immense amount of money and ended many common diseases with his medical foundations. He was notoriously frugal, and even when he was a billionaire was still penny-pinching and haggling with merchants over small amounts out of the principle of it.
The Chernow biography is a great book, and anyone who is interested in business history should take a look at it. Chernow does a good job explaining the two sides of Rockefeller’s personality and how they co-existed, and with full access to Rockefeller’s papers he has a leg up on previous historians. It’s got a lot of lessons you can apply to your own life as well - Rockefeller wasn’t a genius and built his empire mainly through a combination of hard work and hard-nosed capitalism. Not everyone can be a Rockefeller, but you can certainly better your life by understanding how he succeeded in his.
Discuss this in the Free the Drones Forums.
One Response to “Book Review - Titan : The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow”
August 21st, 2006 at 4:57 am
[...] Kevin Kneupper presents Book Review - Titan : The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow posted at Free the Drones [...]