His father, who abandoned the family for years at a time to ply rustic innocents with patent medicines, left him with shameful secrets (e.g., bigamy and a rape indictment) and acquisitive instincts his mother instilled a devotion to the Baptist faith that manifested itself in philanthropy. Chernow traces Rockefeller’s contradictory impulses toward greed and godliness to his parents. Greater access to family archives, including a 1,700-page interview given by Rockefeller in retirement, enable Chernow to tear at this membrance of artifice and to offer as detailed, balanced, and psychologically insightful a portrait of the tycoon as we may ever have. Rockefeller Sr., both detractors (crusading muckraker Ida Tarbell) and supporters (Allan Nevins). The same cocoon presented daunting obstacles to earlier chroniclers of John D. “Silence, mystery, and evasion” perpetually enveloped the founder of the world’s first great industrial trust, enabling him to crush rivals to his Standard Oil Co. The archetypal American institution-builder-in industry, philanthropy, and the family dynasty bearing his name-is etched with uncommon objectivity and literary grace by National Book Award-winning business historian Chernow ( The Death of the Banker, 1997, etc.).
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