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Summary: Chernow ignores predatory price cutting scholarship
Review: Ron Chernow's book suffers from such a grievous flaw concerning a vital issue of history and economics that it raises doubts about the believability of almost everything else in the book. The issue is this: Did Rockefeller and his Standard Oil Company engage in predatory price cutting? Chernow utterly ignores the most devastating critiques of this charge and simply repeats it in many places in his book, offering little more than bumpersticker one-liners and cliches to support his contention that Rockefeller indeed engaged in this practice.Predatory price cutting is, in theory, the practice of underselling rivals for the purpose of driving them out of business and then raising prices to exploit a market devoid of competition. The typical history text reports that the Standard Oil Company used it often and successfully, as does Chernow. But this charge was painstakingly and definitively dismissed 40 years ago in an article by University of Chicago economist John Mc! ! Gee. It appeared in the October 1958 issue of the Journal of Law and Economics. For Chernow to repeat the false allegation of predatory price cutting without so much as a single reference to McGee's work is historical revisionism at its worst and suggests that Chernow was more interested in smearing Rockefeller than in presenting historical fact. It was an allegation that McGee himself believed to be true, until he did the homework that others never got around to doing. By examining the facts and employing piercing economic logic, McGee stripped the charge of any historical basis or intellectual substance, concluding that it was "logically deficient" and "possessing little or no evidence to support it." By examining the record of actual prices, McGee showed that empirically, there is no reason to believe that Rockefeller achieved his high market share (90 percent of the kerosene business for a fleeting moment around 1890) by preying upon either com! ! petitors or consumers. From 1870 to 1897, kerosene fell fr! om 26 cents per gallon to about 7 cents,and the kerosene of 1897 was much improved over that of 1870. McGee' analysis was reinforced by historian Gabriel Kolko' 1963 book, The Triumph of Conservatism. Kolko was an avowed socialist but nonetheless an historian who could look objectively at the facts. "Standard treated the consumer with deference," he wrote. "Crude and refined oil prices for consumers declined during the period Standard exercised greatest control of the industry." There was no upward spike in prices to take advantage of the absence of competitors because competitors were always present. Predatory price cutting has always been one of those nostrums that sounds plausible in theory but collapses in reality. Some of the reasons why Rockefeller would have been foolish to employ it as a tactic bear repeating: The large predator firm stands to lose the most. "To lure customers away from somebody, he (the predator) must be prepared ! ! to serve them himself,"wrote McGee. "The monopolizer thus finds himself in the position of selling more,abd therefore losing more than his competitors." At about the same time Rockefeller was the dominant oil refiner, Herbert Henry Dow was jump-starting the Dow Chemical Company in Michigan by turning the predatory price cutting theory on its head. German manufacturers, backed by subsidies from the German government, dumped cheap bromine on the American market in an effort to run Dow out of business in the early 1900s. Unbeknownst to the Germans, Dow simply employed agents to buy all the cheap bromine they could get their hands on. He then sold it at much higher prices prevailing in other markets in direct competition with the Germans, who eventually threw in the towel when they saw how their attempt to make Dow their prey was actually making him rich. The Dow story is one that predatory price witch-hunters never talk about because it utterly undermi! ! nes their entire case. Professor McGee concluded, Judg! ing from the record, Standard Oil did not use predatory price discrimination to drive out competing refiners, nor did its pricing practice have that effect. Whereas there may be a very few cases in which retail kerosene peddlers or dealers went out of business after or during price cutting, there is no real proof that Standard=s pricing policies were responsible. I am convinced that Standard did not systematically, if ever, use local price cutting in retailing, or anywhere else, to reduce competition. To do so would have been foolish; and whatever else has been said about them, the old Standard organization was seldom criticized for making less money when it could readily have made more. But nary a word of this and other critics' work on this issue in Titan.
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Summary: Chernow makes a great excuse to visit a dictionary
Review: Ron Chernow has taken a complex man -- and his family -- and placed it squarely on the end-of-the-21st Century table. This is a monument to literary style and dictionary usage. Even after more than 700 pages, I found myself wishing he'd move into the next generation and not end the yarn of the Rockefeller clan
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Summary: Great book!
Review: Excellent, fascinating book. Very well written, wonderful photos. Good balance of information about different sides of J.D.R, his family and collegues.
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Summary: Excellent business history
Review: I found this book an excellent history of a fascinating period of American history seen from the perspective of one its most talented exponents of capitalism. Chernow blends the personal with the general developments in the arena in which Rockefeller was working. Plenty of lessons in philanthropy for today's group of billionaires eg Gates.
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Summary: Excellent as history or as larger-than-life novel.
Review: Finally, a book large enough in scope to cover the complete history of American industrialization - from the post-Civil War boom to modern corporate finance. It is about time someone realized that the history of that whole period can be written as the biography of one remarkable man - Rockefeller. Love that period, love this man - or at least find his (public) life endlessly fascinating. And Chernow brings it all out seamlessly and with attention to detail. A fine history, biography and novel.
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Summary: Excellent research, curious perspective
Review: The New York Times Book Review praises the "moral intelligence" of Ron Chernow's book on John D. Rockefeller. I have a different reaction. The Baptist minister William Sloan Coffin has argued that damaging people is inevitable (since people's interests conflict) and not necessarily evil, but to do damage and call it good is the quintessence of evil. Reading Chernow's book, that phrase kept ringing through my ears. I also found myself remembering Andrew Delbanco's book on Satan, which argues that the traditional image of Satan is today's image of the successful capitalist. Rockefeller exemplifies the terrible arrogance of the self-righteous: His self-image of his goodness licenses his evil. Chernow's groundbreaking book offers much to admire, but "moral intelligence"? I suppose one can see Chernow's "balanced" presentation as some sort of wisdom--unless one believes that, on balance, Rockefeller did a great deal more evil than kindness. Chernow does not make the case that Rockefeller, warts and all, was a good guy. His "balance" seems to me "a priori," a studied professional stance rather than an apt and well-argued appraisal of the facts of Rockefeller's life. I found myself wondering why Chernow was so generally admiring of Chernow. I finished the book more disgusted with Rockefeller than before I knew this much about him.
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Summary: Strong intoduction, bland filler
Review: This book starts out strong, describing in rich detail the rise of one of America's wealthiest men. Very interesting. However, I had to engage in a type of self-coercion to pick the book up after about 100 pages. I hate to call it "filler," but I have to call a spade a spade.
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Summary: A Biography Of Brillance and of an Unyielding Will
Review: Ron Chernow's study of John Davison Rockefeller's historically anomalous, magnificent ascendence to inordinant power is mesmerizing. It is a reading journey that anyone with an interest in American history will take great lessons from. You will, I promise, learn much more from this work tinged in the living genius of a great biographer than you might imagine from its title. Its central subject, John D. Sr., afterall was at the center of America's gilded age in substance if not in fashion . This book, most essentially, is about a level of human will and stern excellence that is truly freakish. The principles adopted by Rockerfeller to guide his actions appear to have been melted into his being.
John D. Rockefeller is shown to be a living embodiment of the dream which is the American myth. He is the the best example of the ethos of the pioneer and of elected transcendence that America can point to.
Mr. Chernow's study of this proud Titan has me assuming, without much doubt, that Rockefeller smiles down onto us from the gilded vantage point in the Heaven that he vowed to stay out of for 100 years. He failed in this promise to himself, as he rarely otherwise did, dropping dead at 98 years of age, in one of his favorite mansions. Of course, his enormous charitable enterprises along with the petroleum products that drive the world's economy continue to affect all of our lives daily.
This Rockefeller tome has suggested a new awareness of what success could mean and precisely what sort of character traits could lead to it. If some of those characteristics are woven from the threads of a debased kind of Holy Roller, Biblical bliss, that basis is irrelevant since its brand of bliss is what made Rockefeller so good when he was being good.
This then is the story of an ultimately imposing, rurally reared, patriotic Protestant with a fire in his conviction that allowed no defeat. Ron Chernow, in this lyrical monument to an icon details the constantly fanatical attention to the task at hand; and that was Rockefeller's most discernible difference from mere mortals. There are ideas and conclusions contained in this portrait of an often disrespected colossus that can positively influence the life of anyone who considers them.
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Summary: Strong intoduction, bland filler
Review: This book starts out strong, describing in rich detail the rise of one of America's wealthiest men. Very interesting. However, I had to engage in a type of self-coercion to pick the book up after about 100 pages. I hate to call it "filler," but I have to call a spade a spade.
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Summary: The Two Sides of Titan
Review: Like its hero, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller has two sides. At times the almost novelesque book is insufferable. The text is dense and dizzying, making anyone who is not an economist feel incompetent and mind-boggled. At certain points, I needed to reread a sentence maybe two or three times because I either did not understand economic principle being displayed or because of my sheer lack of interest. When I was almost ready to quit with the constant analysis of the oil industry and Rockefeller's economic strategy, Chernow brought out the more personal side of the book, delving into Rockefeller's private life using uncommon and interesting anecdotes. It is quite obvious that Rockefeller's religious beliefs and family history greatly contributed to his transformation into the titan that will forever be remembered in American history. Chernow both proved my preconceived notions of the frugal and hard businessman that Rockefeller seemed to be and then surprised me, revealing the kinder, more spiritual Rockefeller who is oddly likable. I both loved and hated him. Like Chernow states, "what makes him so problematic- and why he continues to inspire such ambivalent reactions- is that his good side was every bit as good as his bad side was bad. Seldom has history produced such a contradictory figure. We are almost forced to posit, in helpless confusion, at least two Rockefellers: the good, religious man and the renegade businessman, driven by baser motives." So like its protagonist, Titan has two sides, its solid factual analysis of Rockefeller's business that perhaps only an economist could enjoy, and its warm-hearted account of Rockefeller's unexpected traits, which is far more appealing.
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