Chernow, however, does not see Rockefeller as a repentant evildoer, but rather a fascinating man of remarkable inner depth, whose rapacious and beneficent sides coexisted throughout his life.Īs a biography, Titan follows a basic chronological narrative, but Chernow also makes organizational decisions that highlight some of the book’s major themes.Įarly chapters describe Rockefeller’s boyhood and adolescence, first in upstate New York and later in the Cleveland area. Titan, therefore, is the story of an industrial-pirate-turned-global-benefactor.

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.īy the end of his life, his charitable organizations had given away hundreds of millions of dollars, and the name of this once-notorious tycoon had become associated with unparalleled generosity.

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. Rockefeller (whom Chernow calls “Senior” following the 1874 birth of his son, John D.

Titan by Ron Chernow