Titan: The Life of John D Rockefeller Sr - Tapa dura

Brilliantly researched and written (WALL STREET JOURNAL)

Students of the Robber Baron epoch of American history will relish this book. Mr Chernow... has chosen the juiciest subject of them all. Chernow tells it with the panache it needs. (SUNDAY TELEGRAPH)

Required reading for anyone interested in the courtroom battle between Bill Gates and the US Justice Department. (DAILY TELEGRAPH)

This book is a triumph of the art of biography. (NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW)

There are worse men than John D Rockefeller,' Arena magazine observed at the turn of the century. 'There is probably not one, however, who in the public mind so typifies the grave and startling menace to social order.' The son of a flamboyant bigamist and pedlar of patent medicine, Rockefeller was by then America's richest man, the mastermind and creator of the country's first and most powerful monopoly: the Standard Oil Company. Reaching into every household across America, Standard Oil controlled 90% of all oil refined in the US, as well as its production, transportation, marketing and distribution. The story of Rockefeller is the story of a pivotal moment in modern history: the shift, after the American Civil War, from small-scale business to economy of scale, and the development of the first modern corporation. In Ron Chernow's magisterial work we see this transition in all of its nuances - accompanied by the rise in labour militancy, the tabloid press and large-scale philanthropy. TITAN is a business epic that, by illuminating the past, teaches us much about where we are today.