God's Gold: The Story of Rockefeller and His Times

In 1932, John T. Flynn had begun to rethink his old-style "progressivism" to develop intellectually into a defender of markets as against the regimentation of government management. A first product of these steps is this classic and extraordinary full biography of John D. Rockefeller. In this highly sympathetic portrayal, Flynn shows how Rockefeller employed the tools of capitalism to become enormously rich in the service of others, and how this unleashed the most unexpected backlash from anti-capitalists of all sorts, culminating in the breakup of Standard Oil. He saw that this was done at the behest of Rockefeller's competition, and not in the public interest. It was the first and probably still the best biography of an American original.