House of Morgan Essay
The House of Morgan by RonChernow paints a story about the various personalities that were responsible for building the Morgan Empire as well as the renown respect the rest of the financial community had for this empire. There were many interesting issues that this book covered which include the way the Morgan House was able to control corporate America at the turn of the century. This book gave the reader a look into the rise of the modern financial world. Chernow gave life to the characters of the House of Morgan, their allies as well as foes, against the economic, political and social backdrop of their time. When the book first started off with George Peabody, I was not entertained by the notion of Peabody’s frugality. Peabody, who was born in Massachusetts to a poor family, becomes a successful merchant and moves to London where he opens up a merchant bank. He lives in London for twenty years before returning to America and amasses a huge fortune, but never loses his basic insecurity about money. The fact that Peabody was very wealthy but stingy about simple things like cab fare was astonishing. I would think that a man with so much money and power would live more carefree and be less of a scrooge about costs. However, it is always a great story to see someone with nothing making it to the top.