What I learned from reading Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow.
The life of John D.
Rockefeller was marked to an exceptional degree by silence, mystery and evasion.
Even though he presided over the largest business and philanthropic enterprises of his day, he has remained an elusive figure, a master of disguises.
He spent his life camouflaged behind multiple Persona and shrouded beneath layers of mythology.
He lingers in our national psyche as a series of disconnected images, ranging from the aggressive creator of standard oil, brilliant but bloodless, to the elderly man dispensing dimes and canned speeches for newsreel cameras.
It's often hard to piece together the varied images into a coherent picture.
This has not been for a lack of trying.
Earlier in the century, Rockefeller inspired more prose than any other private citizen in America.
With books about him tumbling forth at a rate of nearly one per year, he was the most famous american of his day.
Yet even in his heyday of popular interest, he could seem maddeningly opaque.
With much of his life unfolding behind the walls of his estates, Rockefeller often seems to be missing from his own biographies, moving through them like a ghostly, disembodied figure.
When Random House proposed that I write the first full length biography of Rockefeller since the 1950s, I balked.
How could one write about a man who made such a fetish of secrecy when I told them that I couldnt write about Rockefeller unless I heard his inner voice, the music of his mind, as I phrased it?
They brought me the transcript of an interview privately conducted with Rockefeller between 1917 and 1920.
As I pored over this 1700 page transcript, I was astonished.
Rockefeller, stereotyped as taciturn and empty, turned out to be analytical, articulate, even fiery.
He was also quite funny, with a dry midwestern wit.
This wasn't somebody I had encountered in any biography.
I was now eager to do the book.
Even with such massive documentation, I.