[dharmon]

If this short bio is interesting, you may enjoy the much more in-depth biography, _Titan_, by Ron Chernow.

In addition to an incredibly thorough (and even-handed, IMO) treatment of Rockefeller, I found it an interesting perspective on the post-war period in the US.

[aerovistae]

Cool anecdote from Titan, one of countless:

  Rockefeller was relentless in ferreting out ways to cut costs. During an inspection tour of a Standard Oil plant in New York City, for instance, he observed a machine that soldered the lids on five-gallon cans of kerosene destined for export. Upon learning that each lid was sealed with 40 drops of solder, he asked, "Have you ever tried 38?" It turned out that when 38 drops were applied, a small percentage of the cans leaked. None leaked with 39, though. "'That one drop of solder', said Rockefeller,...'saved $2,500 the first year; but the export business kept on increasing after that and doubled, quadrupled--became immensely greater than it was then; and the saving has gone steadily along, one drop on each can, and has amounted since to many hundreds of thousands of dollars"' (Chernow 1998, pp. 180-81). Over the course of his career at the helm of Standard Oil, "Rockefeller cut the unit costs of refined oil almost in half" (Ibid., p. 150).

[coderholic]

Version that's possible to read:

"Rockefeller was relentless in ferreting out ways to cut costs. During an inspection tour of a Standard Oil plant in New York City, for instance, he observed a machine that soldered the lids on five-gallon cans of kerosene destined for export. Upon learning that each lid was sealed with 40 drops of solder, he asked, "Have you ever tried 38?" It turned out that when 38 drops were applied, a small percentage of the cans leaked. None leaked with 39, though. "'That one drop of solder', said Rockefeller,...'saved $2,500 the first year; but the export business kept on increasing after that and doubled, quadrupled--became immensely greater than it was then; and the saving has gone steadily along, one drop on each can, and has amounted since to many hundreds of thousands of dollars"' (Chernow 1998, pp. 180-81). Over the course of his career at the helm of Standard Oil, "Rockefeller cut the unit costs of refined oil almost in half" (Ibid., p. 150).

[aerovistae]

  What, don't you like monospace fonts??

[dredmorbius]

On mobile, your version simply scrolls off the page with no option for reading it. Worse than useless, actually.

[Others]

It's actually like that on my laptop to, although slightly better, since I can actually scroll it.

[rhizome]

I just get a long scroll bar.

[jwdunne]

Another similar thing that stuck out to me was how he held up his books. They were meticulous and he prided himself of them. I remember reading the joy he had of learning double entry book keeping.

The man loved money. He loved keeping track of it down to the last detail. He even used to chant "one day I will be rich, rich, rich"!

Very interesting man. Given his character and the conditions he was in, it wasn't at all surprising he amassed so much wealth.

[samstave]

Please explain

[adventured]

I'll second that book. It's an excellent read, covering his rise from almost nothing to oil monopolist, and everything in-between (eg there are fascinating parts in there about Standard Oil's collision with the first Russian oil gushers, which significantly threatened Standard's international expansion).

[WalterBright]

What's amusing about the book is Chernow would sum up each chapter with the popular narrative of how awful Rockefeller was, yet the facts presented in that chapter told another story.

[travmatt]

That book was invalualable for exactly those two reasons: the evenhanded portrait of a very complex individual, and a detailed portrait of the world in which he lived and knew. That book started me on a long tear of other biographies of large individuals in American history, specifically from Reconstruction through the Vietnam War. I'm currently working through Robert Caro's multipart series on Lyndon Johnson, another awesome biographer.

[AndrewKemendo]

In that case it might be worth reading Factory Man, which is a somewhat biography of John D. Bassett III, third generation owner of Bassett furniture.

Completely fascinating history of the home furnishings industry and how globalization completely upended it.

[rpgmaker]

I wonder if I will ever get to read Caro's LBJ books. They've been on my to-reads for ages.

[Nicholas_C]

They were incredible, especially the first book, The Path to Power. It's a fascinating story of a man from humble beginnings who just wouldn't quit and had an unrelenting desire to be somebody powerful.

[jhwitham]

Titan is a great read. For a more throughout book of the oil industry there is also Yergin's The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power.

[saryant]

Follow that up with Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power by Steve Coll and you've got a fascinating and compelling look at the last ~120 years of oil and American history.

[samstave]

If I were to read all of these - where will I end up mentally? In awe or in prison?

[saryant]

I find myself in awe. Men like Rockefeller made our modern age possible.

[markdog12]

Highly recommend. One of the best bios I've ever read. The man had an iron will.

[samstave]

I wonder, who in our day is Rockefeller - as it would seem that it might be musk but without being an asshole.

Zuck is just a manipulator and as he is so young, I don't expect his actually legacy to take hold for at least 40 years. But musk is much more a Titan than zuck. Zuck isn't really doing anything outside his comfort zone - but that doesn't mean that oculus won't be a thing in 20 years - but I wouldn't credit that to zuck.

[arzt]

Bezos - hands down, similar degree of ruthlessness in controlling all markets he touches. An anecdote from the "The Everything Store" which sheds more light below:

“Bezos kept pushing for more. He asked Blake to exact better terms from the smallest publishers, who would go out of business if it weren't for the steady sales of their back catalogs on Amazon. Within the books group, the resulting program was dubbed the Gazelle Project because Bezos suggested to Blake in a meeting that Amazon should approach these small publishers the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle.

As part of the Gazelle Project, Blake's group categorized publishers in terms of their dependency n Amazon and then opened negotiations with the most vulnerable companies. Three book buyers at the time recall this effort. Blake herself said that Bezos meant the cheetah-and-gazelle analogy as a joke and it was carried too far. Yet the program clearly represented something real--an emerging realpolitik approach toward book publishers, an attitude whose ruthlessness startled even some Amazon employees. Soon after the Gazelle Project began, Amazon's lawyers heard about the name and insisted it be changed to the less incendiary Small Publisher Negotiation Program.” ― Brad Stone, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

[joshvm]

There's also the natural, if a bit disturbing, business tactic of examining which products sell best on Amazon and then leveraging economy of scale to produce their own copies (Amazon Basics).

Although Apple is also famous for ruthless negotiation with publishers, they're proud enough that an Apple copy (e.g. the U-turn on styluses) will rarely be cheaper than what they've taken inspiration from.

[adventured]

Bill Gates probably already took that title. He'll have generated a likely $150 billion in total wealth by the time he's done (stands at around $115 billion now; $87 billion per Bloomberg's rankings plus around $30b+ given to the foundation so far). He built a monopoly at the core of the most lucrative boom industry of his day (computing and software). Similar reputations, similar drive and ambition, similar behaviors under anti-trust questioning, similar response to give his wealth away after stepping away from the business, and so on. Interestingly however, Gates was far more prone at emotional outbursts and getting upset, Rockefeller was extremely contained by comparison.

As someone else noted, Bezos might follow along with Gates, but it appears Bezos is more like Sam Walton than a Rockefeller. Walmart sprawled into numerous other categories, attempting to perpetually find new ways to make money at the edges of its empire; Walmart is a hyper low margin business, built on low prices and high efficiency; both Sam Walton and Bezos retained very large stakes in their businesses despite the size; both kept fundamental control. Amazon has no serious monopoly category however, and they have a comparatively weak cash generation capability (AWS is spitting off some nice operating income, but it pales in comparison to the very high margin cash spigot that Windows was).

[travmatt]

Hands down it would be Peter Thiel. After I read that book I heard so much of Rockefeller in his worldview, I really thought it was uncanny. Specifically, Thiel's view on monopolies had some hints of Rockefeller.

[travmatt]

The part that struck me about the descriptions of him was his metronome-like consistency.

[samstave]

That seems like the same author who wrote about Alexander Hamilton from which a lot of the research for the Broadway play "Hamilton" came from...