5 moguls

T.J. Stiles says these mogul biographies offer rich rewards

1. Andrew Carnegie. Joseph Frazier Wall. Oxford, 1970

In the past few decades we have seen a sweeping reassessment of the so-called robber barons of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The trend began in 1970 with Joseph Frazier Wall's "Andrew Carnegie"—a groundbreaking work that remains a pleasure to read. By turns a thoughtful sifter of the evidence, a sharp and amusing portraitist, and a storyteller with real panache, Wall brings a gift for clarity to both historical context and the blow-by-blow of business battles. His tales of intrigue among Carnegie's partners are particularly vivid. Carnegie wore many guises—he got his start as an entrepreneur through sweetheart deals, proved a ruthlessly efficient steelmaker and aspired to influence world affairs—and this book artfully integrates them all.

2. The Life and Legend of Jay Gould. Maury Klein. Johns Hopkins, 1986

Jay Gould's "reputation for being cold and aloof," writes Maury Klein, "owed much to the fact that he was a shy, reserved man whose emotions registered on so small a scale, such as tearing bits of paper or tapping a pencil, that only initiates recognized them." Such insight and literary grace explain why Klein's "The Life and Legend of Jay Gould" remains the definitive work on this controversial tycoon. The author narrates with wry humor and verve such episodes as the corruption-riddled battle among financiers for control of the Erie Railroad in 1868 and Gould's attempt to corner the gold market in 1869. But Klein's greatest contribution may be in describing Gould's later years, when he proved a master corporate strategist, building an empire around the Missouri Pacific railroad.

3. Morgan  Jean Strouse. Random House, 1999

As America's leading banker, J.P. Morgan played a role unlike any other business titan of his age, influencing one industry after another. He reorganized the chaotic railroads and forged U.S. Steel and General Electric—in other words, he was the father of the trusts that others set out to bust. "When the federal government ran out of gold in 1895, Morgan raised $65 million and made sure it stayed in the Treasury's coffers," writes Jean Strouse in this elegant biography. "When a panic started in New York in 1907, he led teams of bankers to stop it." Strouse is masterly, whether addressing finance, family, art or the human condition. Her portrait of Morgan's first rare-book librarian, Belle da Costa Greene—the daughter of Harvard's first black graduate, she passed as Portuguese—is but one example of Strouse's literary gifts and appreciation for the importance of secondary characters in a good biography.

4. Fallen Founder. 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.

5. Pulitzer. James McGrath Morris. Harper, 2010

Today's reporters and media tycoons would do well to study James McGrath Morris's life of Joseph Pulitzer, the journalist, editor and entrepreneur. A proverbial penniless immigrant (a German-speaking Hungarian Jew), Pulitzer fought for the Union in the Civil War, then moved to St. Louis. There he learned English and the news business. His rapid rise in journalism was interwoven with politics, a natural twist, since newspapers were overtly partisan. He briefly held elected office but found greatness as a newspaper owner. Morris is fascinating on Pulitzer as a working (make that hard-working) reporter and editor who understood how to grab his readers—and saw where his industry was going (or could go).

—Mr. 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, now available in paperback from Vintage.Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page W8
22 May 2010