Saturday, May 22, 2010

Five best books on US business moguls

T.J. Stiles is the author of The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, winner of the 2009 National Book Award and the 2010 Pulitzer Prize.

For the Wall Street Journal he named a five best list of books on American moguls. One title on the list:
Fallen Founder
by Nancy Isenberg
Viking, 2007

It is not easy to get a fair hearing when you have killed the man on the $10 bill. But Aaron Burr is treated with scholarly care and writerly sympathy by Nancy Isenberg in "Fallen Founder." A hero in the American Revolution and the country's third vice president, Burr founded the forerunner of J.P. Morgan Chase: the Manhattan Co., a water company and bank. He pioneered modern political methods by systematically identifying and organizing voters, contributors and activists. Isenberg offers evidence that Burr was no villain in the 1804 duel that killed Alexander Hamilton. Three years later, Burr was arrested for what his enemies called a conspiracy to set up an independent state in the west; he was tried for treason and exonerated, then went on to become an influential New York lawyer. An astonishing life.
Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue