The House of Morgan is essentially a biography of a family, a house of banking and the US banking industry. The banking industry which began in earnest after the Civil War and developed through the railroad system is chronicled in a biography of J.P. Morgan and his family. The family became a powerhouse in banking when families were extremely important in the business. The family adapted as the years went on finally forming several corporations and enduring the difficult years of the New Deal where bankers were the enemy. The House of Morgan has survived in some form right into the present. This book is a winner of the National Book Award and is a very good book. Highly recommended.

I will not restate the excellent reviews already published here about this monumental book. I have been interested in JP Morgan since he appeared as a character in Caleb Carr's mystery novels, The Alienist and Angel of Darkness. He and Teddy Roosevelt, then Commissioner of Police in New York form a team of crime fighters, an incongruous image for the forbidding banker. Recently, I read The Panic of 1907: Lessons Learned from the Market's Perfect Storm and that led me to Chernow's somewhat dated but still important book. What is eerie is the parallel between 1929, with the securitization of junk Latin American bonds sold to millions by bond traders, and the Fannie Mae junk mortgage securities. In both cases, caution went out the window and a frenzy of trading led right over the precipice. Why did people think the laws of economics had been repealed ? This history of the Morgan banking empire provides a background explaining how we got here and a disturbing picture that suggests this has all happened before. It is excellent history and timely now that history seems to have repeated itself, perhaps this time as farce.

Chernow pioneered the popular study of corporate history with this sweeping history of the Morgan banking empire back in 1990. This is a superb bit of history writing on almost every level: it's intensively researched and documented; it's a great story with a real narrative arc and emotional tension; it has far reaching implications in the fields of economics and American history and synthetically knits together these two areas with insight and revelatory vision.

The story of the House of Morgan isn't just the story of JP Morgan and it isn't just the study of Morgan Guarantee or Morgan Stanley. (The House of Morgan historically has encompassed Drexel's Philadephia bank, Morgan's NY bank, Morgan Grenfell in London and Morgan Harjes in Paris.) The House of Morgan has its roots in George Peabody's London merchant bank of the 1830s hawking junk rated US State securities, then passed to Junius P. Morgan, then on to his son J.P. Morgan, and then on to his son J.P. Morgan (Jr. - known as "Jack") and then goes right through to the modern era (the book ends in the heyday of the corporate takeover binge of the 1980s). There have been a number of excellent biographies of J.P. Morgan (such as Jean Strouse's excellent "Morgan: American Financier" of 2000), but they all pick up the story of the Morgan banking empire in mid stream and then drop out when J.P. dies in 1913 - right before things get really interesting. The Morgan Bank was instrumental in arming England in WW1 and was in the very thick of the war reparations morass following the Treaty of Versailles. The Glass-Steagle act of 1933 (which forced the split between investment and commercial banks) was aimed straight at the House of Morgan - one of a series of government actions (including the creation of the Federal Reserve banking system) designed to limit the tremendous power of the House of Morgan. Glass-Steagle forced the creation of Morgan Stanley which arguable only increased the House of Morgan's reach and power. "The House of Morgan" gets it all and puts it all in its place. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the Morgan banking empire - and by extension anyone who wants to understand American finance in the period century of the United State's ascent.

The heart of the story is J.P. Morgan, of course. Morgan was the consummate guardian of the "Gentleman Banker's Code" - a Victorian notion of serving the greater good through serving the client that formed the heart of the finance culture - with some Protestant spiritual overtones thrown in. Morgan's bank, with its twin loci on either side of the Atlantic, sat astride the flow of capital between England and the US. In the 19th Century English capital investment was vital for American industrial development and Morgan helped tame the destructive competitive business practices common in the railroad wars where rival rail lines would squander millions building parasitic parallel lines in an effort to drive the competition out of business. Morgan learned the lesson that cutthroat competition was wasteful of investor's capital and he ever after strove to build peaceful vast monopolies. This kind of business value system seems at odds with our current notion of free market capitalism it certainly wasn't very popular with labor or with those who feared the power of vast trusts. Vast trusts were Morgan's specialty. He personally assembled the first billion dollar stock offering in knitting together the vast majority of US steel production into US Steel. He set up a host of other vast monopolistic conglomerates including General Electric, International Telephone & Telegraph, International Harvester, International Mercantile Marine, and a host of railroad accumulations (just to mention the highlights). In defending foreign investment interests he defended the dollar's value on the International market by defending the gold standard - putting him at odds with bimetallism and William Jennings Bryan. In the East Room of his fabulous 36th St. Library there is a huge 16th century tapestry representing the sin of greed. Morgan clearly thought of himself as a force for moral order among robber baron thieves. When JP Morgan died he left less than $120 million - a figure that shocked many people who had figured he was worth far more. Morgan assembled vast economic power through board voting proxies with the goal of orchestrating a smoother running economy for the profit of his clients. While Morgan did good business on legitimate business, he didn't skim or abuse his position (granted "insider trading" wasn't considered a sin in those days - if it was done discretely). JP Morgan died in 1913 a year after the Titanic (which was built by IMM - his new shipping trust; thus stressing Morgan doubly because he had friends who died on board and the disaster stood to devastate the bottom line of a huge project/client of his) and the Pujo hearings where Morgan was grilled for his role in resolving the Panic of '07 which involved a massive hat trick of capital manipulation that featured putting Teddy Roosevelt over a barrel and forcing him to approve a critical bit of monopolistic corporate takeover business for the US Steel concern.

As juicy as all that is, things actually get even better during the reign of Jack Morgan (who ruled the House of Morgan from 1913 to 1943) when we get to see Morgan banks' involvement with the rise of fascism in Italy and Japan and driving home the spike of reparations in post WW1 Germany. It's fascinating beyond that too. We see the rise of corporate wealth and access to capital in the post WWII period with a tide of legislation, but also the critical post Bretton Wood's unmooring of the capital markets. With corporations gaining direct access to capital markets banks struggled to stay relevant with the balance of power tipping to consumer banking. Commercial and Investment banks were forced to get creative and the leveraged buyout and corporate takeover booms are seen as an adaptive response by the banking industry to the new economic reality - with the final abandoning of the Gentleman Banker's code as a consequence (and a metaphorical Jolly Rodger flag as its replacement). I really can't recommend this book more highly to anyone with any shred of interest in any of this vitally important stuff.

Ron Chernow is one terrific writer. Hard to put down his books, including the biography of Alexander Hamilton and the House of Morgan.
His in depth research and writing ability are superb.

"The House of Morgan" by Ron Chernow gives full reign to the author's access to never-before seen material and lively prose as he majestically takes the reader on a tale that spans two centuries and intersects global events. Despite being a historian without an insider's knowledge of Wall Street Chernow has sculpted a book that covers not only financial happenings but their political and social contexts. Chernow doesn't flinch as he discusses the larger-than-life John Pierpont Morgan Snr's controversial role in shaping early corporate America (not to mention his penchant for attacking hostile media with his cane), the House of Morgan's role in World War I and II and the movement of Morgan Stanley and its associates into the hostile takeover arena as the clubby world of investment banking gave way to the democritization of capital. The only question left is whether Mr. Chernow may continue the book from 1990 to the present as great changes in the Morgan House have been wrought such as Morgan Stanley's disastrous merger with Dean Witter and subsequent management upheavel as well as JP Morgan re-entering the investment banking game and the buying of Bear Stearns. In short - a classic and a must read especially for those looking to enter into the world of high finance and "do business in a first class way."