Titan: The Life of Paul D. Rockefeller, Sr

Chernow does an incredible job here. He is dealing with a reclusive, complex and dualistic subject, yet unlike past Rockefeller biographers, he is able to dispassionately paint each aspect of Rockefeller’s extraordinarily long life, from his unbelievably odd and tenuous pre-civil war life, to his dogged early business years, through the rise of Standard Oil, through Rockefeller’s many controversies, faults, and challenges, and into his prolific and precedent-setting philanthropic career. All of which, of course, takes place during a period of remarkable change in American history, from the Civil War, to the gilded age, to the beginnings of 20th century American power.

The further into this book you get, the more you realize it is required reading for anyone seeking to understand the critical beginnings of American industrialism, the iconographic role of the individual in Western business, the challenges and systemic moral entanglements of philanthropy, asymmetric power, and so many other essential concepts we create our own unfounded assumptions upon. Yes, this is a 774-page commitment, but it’s one that is hard to put down.