The Age of the Moguls

Recently, in Outliers: The Story of Success Malcolm Gladwell examined that unique patch of history where Carnegie, Rockefeller and Morgan, three of the richest men in the history of the world were all born within half a decade of each other. He intended to make the point of how stunningly rare such a convergence of circumstance was. In Age of the Moguls, we see proof of that line of thinking countless times whether it's Carnegie's mentorship with the most powerful railroad man in the country or Du Pont's close friendship with the founding fathers. The reader see both the American dream story of hard work and the honest awareness of luck and fortune. Holbrook tells each of the Moguls story without the breathless worship or jaded criticism that dates so many of these books. It's worth mentioning because not only is Holbrook fair but he is a humanizer. We see Rockefeller as a man, not a monster. Henry Ford, emerges not as a hero or an anti-Semite but as a hard worker, a passionate man with an ignorant streak. It's honestly shocking that Holbrook manages to so capture the essence of each of his twenty five plus subjects without cracking the 400 page mark. From Carnegie to Rockefeller to Ford, Hearst and Guggenheim, this has each of the great American success stories and to the last, they are superbly written.

First, some brief background information about Stewart Hall Holbrook (1893-1964). Throughout his adult years, he was at first a lumberjack and then a writer, journalist, and (his descriptive) "lowbrow historian." The Age of the Moguls (1953) is probably his best-known work but it should be noted that, for more than thirty years, he wrote for The Oregonian, the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the western United States (founded in 1850) and also authored or co-authored dozens of other books whose titles correctly indicate the scope and variety of his interests. For example, Little Annie Oakley & Other Rugged People (1948), Wild Bill Hickok Tames the West (1952) with Ernest Richardson, Davey Crockett (1955), Wyatt Earp: U.S. Marshall (1956), The Golden Age of Quackery (1959), The Golden Age of Railroads (1960), and Wildmen, Wobblies & Whistle Punks: Stewart Holbrook's Lowbrow Northwest (1992), an anthology. Holbrook's style of writing is as lively as his selection of subjects but it would be a mistake to question the authenticity of his historical material. One source (whose name I do not recall) has correctly described him as a "feisty David McCullough." In The Age of Moguls, Holbrook examines a number of "lords of capital" who, in his words, "made `deals,' purchased immunity, and did other things which in 1860, or 1880, or even 1900, were considered no more than `smart' by their fellow Americans, but which today would give pause to the most conscientiously dishonest promoter....They were a motley crew, yet taken together they fashioned a savage and gaudy age as distinctively purple as that of imperial Rome, and infinitely more entertaining." The group Holbrook considers is divided into three categories: promoters, bankers, and industrialists, with merchants in the latter group. They include Jim Fisk, Jay Gould, Charlie Gates, Thomas William Lawson, Henry H. Rogers, Henry Morrison Flagler, and Samuel Insull; Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Cyrus McCormick, Philip D. Armour, Henry Clay Frick, Henry Ford, and the Du Ponts; also the Guggenheims, Andrew W. Mellon, James J. Hill, Edward Henry Harriman, Henry Villard, the first two Vanderbilts, and the Astors. Some of these names remain familiar in our own time; others do not. All were "tough-minded fellows, who fought their way encased in rhinoceros hides and filled the air with their mad bellowings and the cries of the wounded." A colorful lot indeed. There are several reasons why I hold this book in such high regard. First, until reading it, I knew very little about the social and economic significance of what Holbrook characterizes as a "savage and gaudy age." As he explains so well, it was certainly both but the moguls he examines, together, established a bedrock of capitalism which remains intact to this day even as new laws and regulatory enforcement of them seem to ensure that, although Holbrook is not overly concerned with comparative business ethics then and

Holbrook wrote in the first half of the 20th century about the businesses and characters that built the United States. His approach was not one of fawning adoration, rather he focussed on the quirks and oddities. He wrote in an irreverent popular style, yet the quality of the history in excellent. Think of him as a cranky David McCullough.Age Of Moguls is a series of biographies/portraits of the big actors in building the business that built this country.Buy this book and any anything else you can find of his.