The Tycoons opens with the death of President Abraham Lincoln and the beginning of the nation's recovery from the Civil War. The book's four protagonists—steel pioneer Andrew Carnegie, oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, railroad man Jay Gould, and financier J. P. Morgan—are all about thirty and are ready to launch enterprises that will help propel America beyond Great Britain as the world's economic superpower. The Tycoons tells their stories and describes the impact they had both in their own time and on the world today.
And what were their legacies? For author Charles R. Morris, the tycoons spurred development of an American middle class, the first consumer economy, and a staggeringly strong industrial engine that powered American growth seemingly on momentum alone well into the twentieth century. Much of what we read here about the business titans we have heard before, but Morris may change your impression of these men—some for the better (Gould), and some for the worse (Morgan)—as he tells their stories against the backdrop of America's rise to power.
He is a forceful storyteller, quick to use adjectives to flesh out character. “Andrew Carnegie was the most irritating of tycoons. A petite five-foot-three, towheaded, with small hands and feet and a boyish face, he was a tireless bundle of bouncing, gabbling energy, opinionated and obsequious, fawning and provocative, preternaturally quick in apprehension of anything that would advance his interests.”
Morris says that no matter what time they were born to, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Gould, and Morgan would have risen to prominence. But their time was post-Civil War America, when business was as much a magnet to talent as military leadership or statecraft had been before. And they took advantage. “They forced the pace, drove the transition to ever-larger scales, and, for good and for ill, imposed personal stamps on the national economy that persisted well into the twentieth century.”
Morris has nine books to his credit including American Catholic and Money, Greed, and Risk.
- Sean Silverthorne