Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow

I recently finished Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow. As his first oil wells were not far from Pittsburgh (2017 OCON venue), I thought it might be of special interest to the List. It was first published in 1997 and provides an exhaustive account of John D.’s life and work.

It is very long (35 hrs audio) but I found myself looking forward to my daily office commute and its next installment on the life of this remarkable man.

Chernow enthusiastically accepts as just the inclusion “robber” and “baron” within the same folio as John D.’s life. However, he does provide the facts of Rockefeller’s life. It wasn’t too hard to mentally delete the pejorative terms used to describe business. After all, no Objectivist could get past the age of maturity without that skill!

Here’s what I posted to Good Reads.

The comprehensiveness of the story allows one to get a remarkably personal picture of this truly remarkable man. This was Chernow’s objective – to neither vilify nor obsequiously praise.

To those who understand the virtues of Capitalism, however, Chernow’s conventional biases are blatant. Yet his honesty allows the reader to delete all the descriptive adjectives and loaded nouns and recognize the truth for oneself.

For those who do not, the data is available to re-evaluate ingrained prejudices towards great wealth and success. Even Ida Tarbell was reported to have said to Jr. later in life that she may have done an injustices to the Rockefellers.

I was struck how this tale from 100 years ago has played out in our own time. The Microsoft Anti-Trust case:  the same muck-raking, the same sanctimonious utterances from “experts”, and the same result: two great visionaries who created industries we all use every day, pushed into retirement at their prime. Oh yes, and the “threat” of monopoly in both cases becoming moot as others found even better ways to provide value.

Popular enthusiasm over both men giving away their fortunes after retirement from business, ignores the truth that without their vision and freedom to act, the fortunes would never have existed in the first place. More importantly: what we take for granted today, may never have been without them.

In my view, Chernow does an excellent job in providing the evidence in this exhaustive biography, though perhaps in spite of his own deeply held opinions.

As an aside, the audio version is first rate and highly recommended for those involved in long commutes.

/sb