Chernow, Ron. The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise
of Modern Finance. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1990. 812 pages.
Author Ron Chernow divides this history of the House of Morgan into
three parts: the baronial age, which ended with the death of the famous
J.P. Morgan in 1913, the diplomatic age from 1913-1948 with J.P. Morgan, Jr.,
Thomas Lamont, Dwight Morrow, and Russell Leffingwell, and the postwar
casino age, when Morgan was three houses in one. (As required by the 1933
Glass-Steagall Act, it became J.P. Morgan and Company and its bank, Morgan
Guaranty Trust; Morgan Stanley, an investment house; and Morgan Grenfell
in London, an overseas securities house.) In its golden age, the House
of Morgan catered to prominent families such as the Astors, Guggenheims,
DuPonts, and Vanderbilts, and to corporations such as U.S. Steel, GE, GM,
and ATT. By the 1980s they found themselves in a more competitive Wall
Street environment, and made money by engineering hostile takeovers.
Chernow enjoyed unusual cooperation from the Morgan empire while
writing this book. Despite his disapproval of the House of Morgan's support
for fascist Italy and Japan in the 1930s, and his ability to throw around
concepts such as "interlocking directorates," in the end Chernow is just
one more "liberal" scholar who has written a conservative history. There
is no mention, for example, of the 1934 Morgan-DuPont conspiracy involving
Smedley D. Butler, to organize a military coup against Franklin Roosevelt.
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