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A landmark work from one of the preeminent historians of our time: the first published biography of Andrew W. Mellon, the American colossus who bestrode the worlds of industry, government, and philanthropy, leaving his transformative stamp on each.
Knopf
October 2006
On Sale: October 3, 2006
Featuring: Andrew Mellon
800 pages
ISBN: 0679450327
EAN: 9780679450320
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography
Following a boyhood in nineteenth-century Pittsburgh, during
which he learned from his Scotch-Irish immigrant father the
lessons of self-sufficiency and accumulation of wealth,
Andrew Mellon overcame painful shyness to become one of
America’s greatest financiers. Across an unusually diverse
range of enterprises, from banking to oil to aluminum
manufacture, he would build a legendary personal fortune,
tracking America’s course to global economic supremacy.
Personal happiness, however, eluded him: his loveless
marriage at forty-five to a British girl less than half his
age ended in a scandalous divorce, and for all his best
efforts, he would remain a stranger to his children. He had
been bred to do one thing, and that he did with brilliant
and innovative entrepreneurship. The Mellon way was to hold
companies closely, including such iconic enterprises as
Alcoa and Gulf Oil. Collecting art, a pursuit inspired by
his close friend Henry Clay Frick, would become his only
nonprofessional gratification. And by the end of his life,
Mellon’s “pictures” would constitute one of the world’s
foremost private collections. Mellon’s wealth and name allowed him to dominate
Pennsylvania politics, and late in life he was invited to
Washington. As treasury secretary under presidents Harding,
Coolidge, and finally Hoover, he made the federal government
run like a business—prefiguring the public official as CEO.
But this man of straightforward conservative politics was no
politician. He would be hailed as the architect of the
Roaring Twenties, but, staying too long, would be blamed for
the Great Depression, eventually to find himself a broken
idol. The New Deal overthrew Andrew Mellon’s every fiscal
assumption, starting with the imperative of balanced
budgets. Indeed, he would become the emblem—and the
scapegoat—for the Republican conviction and policy that the
role of government is to help business create national
wealth and jobs. At the age of seventy-nine, the former
treasury secretary suffered the ultimate humiliation:
prosecution by FDR’s government on charges of tax evasion.
In the end Mellon would be exonerated, as he always trusted
he would be, and throughout the trial, which lasted more
than a year, he never abandoned what had become his last
dream: to make a great gift to the American people. The
National Gallery of Art remains his most tangible legacy,
although he did not live to see its completion. The issues Andrew W. Mellon confronted—concerning
government, business, influence, the individual and the
public good—remain at the center of our national discourse
to this day. Indeed, the positions he steadfastly held
reemerged relatively intact with the Reagan revolution,
having lain dormant since the New Deal. David Cannadine’s
magisterial biography brings to life a towering,
controversial figure, casting new light on our history and
the evolution of our public values.
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