Morgan: American Financier
by Jean Strouse
816 pages
Random House
Published: March 1999
When published in 1999, Jean Strouse’s “Morgan: American Financier” was the first full-scale biography of J.P. Morgan in several decades. Strouse is also the author of “Alice James, A Biography” which won the Bancroft Prize in American History and Diplomacy. She is currently writing a book about John Singer Sargent’s “Wertheimer portraits.”
The best early biographies of J.P. Morgan include Frederick Lewis Allen’s 1949 “The Great Pierpont Morgan” and the 1939 authorized biography “J. Pierpont Morgan, An Intimate Portrait” by Morgan’s son-in-law Herbert Satterlee. Strouse’s biography, however, benefits enormously from…
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My Journey Through the Best Presidential Biographies 
Hi Steve, Just wanted to say that I’ve been following your site for a while and that hope you’re being safe during this pandemic. Well, being stuck at home and reading a good presidential bio will help make the time go faster.
Chris, thanks for the note & I hope you’re doing the same! I’m finishing up a biography of Queen Victoria and should soon be starting Ron Chernow’s bio of Grant which I’ve been looking forward to for quite some time. Having some time off work is, in some ways, a blessing. But with my kids home from school for the forseable future, my time isn’t quite as productive as it might otherwise be 🙂
Thanks for that. I’m staying safe too. One book that I’d recommend to you, although I haven’t read it yet is Long Journey with Mr. Jefferson. I have it in my kindle. Since you’ve read the Dumas Malone series that might be a good supplement and maybe a review too. It’s a bio of Malone but it might contain some interesting nuggets into his process for writing his 38 year series. I bet they’ll write a book on Robert Caro after he’s done with LBJ. I’m currently reading Stephen Ambrose’s series on Nixon and I really like it so far,
Hi Steve,
I’d be interested in your review of “The House of Morgan” by Ron Chernow. His biographies have all been excellent (I’ve read “Grant”, and “Hamilton”), and I’m assuming a history would be great as well. I know it’s not a traditional biography, but do you have this in your follow up list?
Take care, and thanks again for the reviews. I’ve augmented my collection based on your list.
I’ve definitely got that on my “list”…I even thought about reading it instead of Strouse’s more traditional biography but decided to stay mainstream for now. But (1) I have loved everything I’ve read by Chernow (his Grant bio is next on my list) and (2) I had a long-time professional affiliation with The House of Morgan. So I almost read the book about two decades ago but just never managed to set aside the time.