John Pierpont Morgan is usually "depicted...as a ruthless predator who robbed America's farmers and workers to line his own pockets," writes Jean Strouse. But halfway through her first draft of Morgan: American Financier (Random House; 796 pages; $34.95), she realized that the picture she was getting from plowing through a mass of Morgan documents, many of which no previous biographer had seen, was far more complex. Starting over, she has produced a more balanced and crisply written--though at times unnecessarily detailed--portrait than her subject could ever have drawn. History, Strouse observes, is written by "the articulate," and Morgan was anything but....
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
