Ron Chernow.
RON CHERNOW
tITAN: THE LIFE OF JOHN D. ROCKEFLLER SNR (1998)
John D. Rockefeller (born 1839) was the creator of the Standard Oil company, which at its peak controlled 90% of the oil in the USA. Rockefeller’s first job, at the age of sixteen, was as an assistant bookkeeper. From the age of 20 he got involved in oil refining ventures, founding Standard Oil when he was 31. This grew through successful acquisitions, its scale enabling numerous technical innovations, and sharply reducing the cost of producing oil. In retirement he devoted his vast fortune to purposeful and well managed philanthropy, demonstrating a model of giving which was later much imitated. His philanthropic activities focused on research, education and medicine. His philanthropic achievement included the virtual elimination of yellow fever in the USA.
Time magazine wrote of the book: "One of the great American biographies. . . . [Chernow] writes with rich impartiality. He turns the machinations of Standard Oil . . . into fascinating social history." The New York Times Book Review wrote: "A triumph of the art of biography. Unflaggingly interesting, it brings John D. Rockefeller Sr. to life through sustained narrative portraiture of the large-scale, nineteenth-century kind."
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Ron Chernow is a leading American biographer and journalist. The subjects of his biographies include John D. Rockefeller, Alexander Haimilton and George Washington. He has also written accounts of the Morgan and Warburg banking families. He obtained degrees from Yale University and from Pembroke College, Cambridge.
