Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.

Ron Chernow’s Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (1998) is a comprehensive, 676-page biography of a complex man who became one of America’s most controversial business moguls, as well as its foremost philanthropist. Chernow, the author of Grant (2017), The House of Morgan (1990) and Alexander Hamilton (2004), the latter of which inspired a Broadway musical, has established himself as a celebrated biographer of leading figures in US economic history.

John D. Rockefeller (whom Chernow calls “Senior” following the 1874 birth of his son, John D. Rockefeller, Jr.) founded Standard Oil, an industrial behemoth that effectively monopolized the US oil industry in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, served as a model for top-down consolidation in other industries, and provoked intense opposition from the era’s reformers, who believed that such a powerful corporation threatened both democracy and the concept of fair play in economic competition. Meanwhile, as his name and his company became synonymous with greed, and as his private fortune swelled into the country’s largest, Rockefeller donated his money to causes he deemed worthwhile, both in the United States and around the world.