书名:Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr洛克菲勒传
作者:Ron Chernow荣·切尔诺
出版社名称:Vintage
出版时间:2004
语种:英文
ISBN:9781400077304
商品尺寸:15.5 x 4.1 x 23.2 cm
包装:平装
页数:832
★书写美国首富洛克菲勒的创业人生,揭露鲜为人知的创富秘诀
★一部美国财富的累积史,一本美国社会生活的大百科全书
★美国国家图书奖作者切尔诺撰写
★福布斯的很有价值的经商必读书
★我心中的赚钱偶像只有一个,他就是洛克菲勒!——比尔?盖茨
约翰·戴维森·洛克菲勒(John Davison Rockefeller,1839年-1937年),20世纪早期世界首富、石油大王及的慈善家。1870年他创立标准石油公司,在全盛期垄断了全美90%的石油市场及大部分世界市场,成为美国历史上及世界历史上的首位超过10亿美元的富翁。他去世时,总财产约14亿美元,相当于现今3000亿美元以上,因此被普遍视为人类历史上的首富。他一生也推动了事业和教育事业的巨大发展,创办了芝加哥大学、洛克菲勒大学及协和医学院(今北京协和医学院)。建立了联合国总部大楼、洛克菲勒中心等地标。 洛克菲勒是一个富有传奇色彩与争议性的人物,是一个古怪、狡诈、冷酷无情,又多有创见、令人难忘的人物。他以残酷的竞争,打压吞并对手及创建托拉斯著称,同时又是一个虔诚的新教徒,提倡节俭,且不时解囊助人,其慷慨程度为前人所不及(生前捐献了5.5亿美元财富)。
本书作者发掘了大量的洛克菲勒的公开和私密的生活档案,透露了很多洛克菲勒的竞争手段、创富秘诀及许多鲜为人知的家族丑闻、悲剧和不幸,细致入微地刻画出了一个性格复杂、引人入胜的人物。Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr是的洛克菲勒传记,展示了洛克菲勒的创富过程,也是一本揭示19至20世纪美国财富积累及社会生活的百科全书,很值得一读。
National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
From the acclaimed, award-winning author of Alexander Hamilton: here is the essential, endlessly engrossing biography of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.—the Jekyll-and-Hyde of American capitalism. In the course of his nearly 98 years, Rockefeller was known as both a rapacious robber baron, whose Standard Oil Company rode roughshod over an industry, and a philanthropist who donated money lavishly to universities and medical centers. He was the terror of his competitors, the bogeyman of reformers, the delight of caricaturists—and an utter enigma.
Drawing on unprecedented access to Rockefeller’s private papers, Chernow reconstructs his subjects’ troubled origins (his father was a swindler and a bigamist) and his single-minded pursuit of wealth. But he also uncovers the profound religiosity that drove him “to give all I could”; his devotion to his father; and the wry sense of humor that made him the country’s most colorful codger. Titan is a magnificent biography—balanced, revelatory, elegantly written.
Review
“A biography that has many of the best attributes of a novel.... Wonderfully fluent and compelling.” — The New York Times
“A triumph of the art of biography. Unflaggingly interesting, it brings John D. Rockefeller Sr. to life through sustained narrative portraiture of the large-scale, nineteenth-century kind.” — The New York Times Book Review
“Important and impressive.... Reveals the man behind both the mask and the myth.” —The Wall Street Journal
“One of the great American biographies.... [Chernow] writes with rich impartiality. He turns the machinations of Standard Oil... into fascinating social history.” — Time
荣·切尔诺,美国的传记作家及书作家。他的第1部作品《摩根家族》获得美国国家图书奖,第二部作品《沃伯格家族》1993年作为商业类著作被授予埃克尔斯奖。
Ron Chernow’s bestselling books include The House of Morgan, winner of the National Book Award; The Warburgs, which won the George S. Eccles Prize; The Death of the Banker; Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Washington: A Life, which received the Pulitzer Prize for Biography; and Alexander Hamilton, nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and adapted into the award-winning Broadway musical Hamilton. Chernow has served as president of PEN American Center and has received seven honorary doctoral degrees. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
In the early 1900s, as Rockefeller led with Andrew Carnegie for the title of the world’s richest man, a spirited rivalry arose between France and Germany, with each claiming to be Rockerfeller’s ancestral land. Assorted genealogists stood ready, for a sizable fee, to manufacture a splendid royal lineage for the oilman. 1 have no desire to trace myself back to the nobility,” he said honestly. “I am satisfied with my good old American stock.” The most ambitious search for Rockefeller’s roots traced them back to a ninth-century French family, the Roquefeuilles, who supposedly inhabited a Languedoc ch?teau—a charming story that unfortunately has been refuted by recent findings. In contrast, the Rockerfeller’s German lineage has been dearly established in the Rhine valley dating back to at least the early 1600s. Around 1723, Johann Peter Rockefeller, a miller, gathered up his wife and five children, set sail for Philadelphia, and settled on a farm In Somerville and then Amwell, New jersey, where he evidently flourished and acquired large landholdings. More than a decade later, his cousin Diell Rockefeller left southwest Germany and moved to Germantown, New York. Diell’s granddaughter Christina married her distant relative William, one of Johann’s grandsons. Never particularly sentimental about his European forebears. John D. Rockefeller did erect a monument to the patriarch. Johann Peter at his burial site in Flemington, New Jersey. The marriage of William and Christina produced a son named Godfrey Rockefeller, who was the grandfather of the oil titan and a most unlikely progenitor of the clan, In 1806.
Godfrey married Lucy Avery in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, despite the grave of her family.
Establishing a pattern that would be replicated by Rockefeller’s own mother, Lucy had in her faint’s disparaging view, married down. Her ancestress had emigrated (rum Kin. England, to Salem, Nlassachuseus, around 1630, from part of the Puritan tide. As they became settled and gentrified, the versatile Averys spawned ministers, soldiers, civic leaders, explorers, and traders, not to mention a bold clutch of Indian lighters. During the American Revolution, eleven Averys perished g1orkusIv in the battle of Groton. While the Rulefellers’ “noble” roots required some poetic License and liberal embellishment, Lucy could justly claim descent from Edmund Ironside, the English king, who was crowned In 1016.
Godfrey Rockefeller was sadly mismatched with his enterprising wife. He had a stunted, impoverished look and a hangdog air of perpetual defeat. Taller than her husband, a fiery Baptist of commanding presence, Lucy was rawboned and confident, with a vigorous step and alert blue eyes. A Former schoolteacher, she was better educated than Godfrey Even John , never given to invidious comments about relatives. Tactfully conceded, “My grandmother was a brave woman. Her husband was not so brave as she.” If Caodfrey contributed the Rockefeller coloring—bluish gray eves, light brown hair—Lucy introduced the rangy frame later notable among the men. Enjoying robust energy and buoyant health, Lucy had ten children, with the third. William Avery Rockefeller, born In Granger, New York, In 1810. While it is easy enough to date the birth of Rockefeller’s father, teams of frazzled reporters would one day exhaust themselves trying to establish the date of his death.
这本书的价值,很大程度上在于它提供了观察一个时代道德光谱的独特视角。洛克菲勒,这个名字本身就承载了太多褒贬不一的标签,从“贪婪的垄断者”到“伟大的慈善家”。而这本传记的厉害之处在于,它并未急于对人物进行简单的道德审判,而是将他置于19世纪末20世纪初那个充满野蛮生长气息的资本丛林中去考察。我特别喜欢作者处理洛克菲勒晚年慈善事业转型的部分,那种从攫取到回馈的巨大转变,究竟是出于真诚的悔悟,还是另一种形式的声誉管理和历史修正?书中提供的细节线索引人深思,它展现了一个复杂人性的侧面:一方面是无情的商业铁腕,另一方面是对知识传播和公共卫生的深切关注。这种内外交织的矛盾性,使得人物形象立体饱满,远超一般脸谱化的伟人传记。阅读过程如同参与一场高难度的历史辩论,你需要不断地在“效率的必要性”和“人性的温度”之间权衡,这才是真正引人入胜的地方,它强迫你跳出简单的二元对立,去理解历史的复杂性。
评分这本书的叙事视角非常独特,它没有把洛克菲勒塑造成一个天选之子,而是一个被时代机遇和个人性格共同塑造成的产物。作者似乎更侧重于描绘他“如何成为”洛克菲勒,而非他“是什么样的人”。这种侧重于过程和环境的叙事,使得传记的质感非常扎实、可信。比如,书中对洛克菲勒家庭的描写,那种清教徒式的节俭与严苛的家教,如何潜移默化地塑造了他对金钱的看法——钱不是享乐的工具,而是衡量效率和责任的刻度。这种对早期生活细节的深挖,为理解他后来的所有行为提供了坚实的心理基础。它像一个精密的社会学田野调查报告,将人物从历史的云端拉回到了那个充满煤烟、汽油味和法律文书的真实工作现场。这让我领悟到,真正的商业巨擘,其成功往往建立在一套异于常人的、极度自律的个人哲学之上,而这哲学,往往在童年和青年时期就已定型。
评分翻开这本厚重的传记,首先映入眼帘的是那个时代特有的宏大叙事感。它不仅仅是记录了一个人的生平,更像是一部关于美国工业化、资本积累以及那个时代商业精神的百科全书。作者的笔触非常细腻,对于洛克菲勒早年在克利夫兰的成长环境、他如何形成那种近乎偏执的效率观念和对数字的敏感度,描绘得入木三分。你仿佛能感受到那个年轻的约翰是如何在细节中寻找突破口,如何用一种近乎宗教般的热忱去追求“完美”的商业结构。尤其让我印象深刻的是,书中对于早期标准石油公司构建过程的描述,那种将松散的地方炼油厂整合、标准化、并最终形成垄断的每一步骤,都像是精密仪器运作的流程图,充满了战略性的冷峻和无可匹敌的执行力。这不是一个简单的成功故事,它揭示了现代商业帝国的底层逻辑,那种对效率和控制的极致追求,即使放在今天来看,也依然具有强烈的震撼力。这本书的叙事节奏把握得非常好,读起来酣畅淋漓,让你在为主人公的商业手腕拍案叫绝的同时,也不禁开始反思,这种绝对的集中化力量,其背后的社会代价究竟几何。
评分最让我感到回味无穷的是这本书在处理“历史反思”时的那种克制与深刻。它并没有简单地将洛克菲勒描绘成资本主义的原罪,而是将他放在了美国从农业社会向工业社会转型这一宏大历史背景下考察。标准的石油垄断,无疑带来了许多社会问题,但它同时也是推动技术进步、降低能源成本、实现规模化生产的必要之恶(至少在那个特定的历史阶段是如此)。书中并未回避垄断带来的负面效应,但它也同时展示了当时社会对效率和统一管理有着强烈的内在需求。这种对历史多面性的呈现,使得整本书的思想深度远超一般的人物传记。读完合上书本时,留下的不是简单的钦佩或反感,而是一种对“进步的代价”和“权力的本质”的复杂思考。这绝对是一部需要反复研读,并在不同人生阶段都能读出新意的经典之作,它不仅仅记录了洛克菲勒,更像是解读了一个时代的密码。
评分坦率地说,这本书的阅读体验是需要一定耐心的,它绝非那种轻飘飘的“励志鸡汤”。大量的篇幅用于详述标准石油在不同州、面对不同法规时的运营策略,以及与铁路公司、政府之间的博弈。对于对金融史或企业发展史不甚了解的读者来说,开头的技术细节可能会显得有些晦涩。但是,一旦你跨过了最初的门槛,你会发现作者对这些枯燥数据和商业条款的解读,充满了洞察力。他没有把这些商业运作仅仅看作是数字游戏,而是将其视为权力斗争的具象化表现。例如,书中对“信托基金”这种组织形式的起源和被洛克菲勒如何玩转的解析,简直是一堂生动的现代企业治理课。它展示了法律条文是如何被资本所塑造和利用的。读完之后,我感觉自己对华尔街早期以及现代大型跨国企业的组织架构,有了一种全新的、更具批判性的理解,那种深入骨髓的系统性设计,远比任何一笔交易本身要来得震撼人心。
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