Napoleon Sarony, John D. Rockefeller, 1880. via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
Vintage
Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
The richest man who ever lived, and the foundation he built to give it away.
$25.00
Available · worldwide delivery
- Author
- Ron Chernow
- Publisher
- Vintage
- Published
- January 2004
- Pages
- 0
- Format
- Paperback
- Size
- Standard
- Language
- English
The Library Essay
Piety and Petroleum Kept One Ledger
John D. Rockefeller tithed to his Baptist church from his first paycheque and recorded the giving in the same ledger as his earnings, and Ron Chernow's 1998 biography treats that ledger as the key to the most controversial fortune in American history. Standard Oil, founded in 1870, came to control nearly all the nation's refining through methods that made Rockefeller the most hated man in America, and the Supreme Court broke it apart in 1911.
By then the second career was under way, the University of Chicago, the medical research institute, the General Education Board and the Rockefeller Foundation, giving on a scale as systematic as the monopoly had been. Chernow refuses to resolve the man into villain or saint, and the book stands as the definitive modern life of the founder of both big oil and big philanthropy.
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