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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