But Chernow notes that “To some extent, Rockefeller sent out conflicting messages and was partly to blame for Harper’s profligacy. He insisted that “the best men must be had” as faculty members for the University of Chicago, which came into existence thanks largely to his munificence.

Yet, when he became ill, Rockefeller frequently relied on folk remedies, such as smoking mullein leaves in a pipe. For nearly every characteristic of his that we know to be true, there is another, countervailing characteristic that we also know to be true.Ĭhernow tells us that John D.’s philanthropic gifts financed theoretical (and many practical) bases of modern health care in America. was a titan with remarkable needs and equally remarkable abilities to mask his real self. The problem is that, like almost everything else about John D.’s extraordinary life, this impression is simultaneously accurate and inaccurate.

The overall impression is of a man without illusions, organized and purposeful, a man fully in control of himself and events. And the symbolism of the rolltop desk, with its dozens of drawers into which papers can be filed, hidden, quickly retrieved, quickly refilled, and quickly rehidden, should not go unnoticed. The richest man in the world (he pulled ahead of Andrew Carnegie sometime during the early 1900s) gazes not so much at you as through you. Just beyond the elegant staircase in the entrance hall is a portrait of John D. Ron Chernow did much of his research for Titan at the Rockefeller Archive Center in Pocantico Hills, Sleepy Hollow, New York, earlier the home of John D. Reviewed for H-Business and EH.Net by Milton Goldin, National Coalition of Independent Scholars (NCIS)

Photographs, notes, bibliography, and index.

Titan rockefeller book