The Robber Barons, by Matthew Josephson

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I’ve been reading this book, The Robber Barons, for like… a year. No joke. Long time. Finally finished it. It’s about the turn of the century masters of money who were willing to basically crush anyone to accumulate more and more. Things you learn from the book: the robber barons were boring, dull people. They were cheap. They didn’t much appreciate culture. They were all idiosyncratic. They didn’t much like each other, either.

Most of them killed some people to get so rich.

My main criticism of the book is a lot of times Matthew Josephson (who I think is one of the coolest writers ever, by the way) glosses over complex deals in ways where he thinks you will understand the parts he’s left out, but you don’t. Either because you weren’t born yet to read about them in the paper or because they are just really complex things.

But forget about all that. The point is, even 100 years ago, it was all about money. That is, about finance. Bankers ruled then and even as the Rockefeller’s built tremendous Oil empires, it was less his mastery of crude and more his mastery of corners and swaps and shorts that enabled Rockefeller to become Rockefeller. Or Vanderbilt to become Vanderbilt. Or Frick to become Frick. Or Carnegie.

Not much has changed.

And politicians don’t play much of a part in this story. I have spent the last ten years of my life wrestling with politicians, yet more and more it feels to me like politics is nothing more than a reflection of of the monied masters who really decide the global society’s fate. That, and, to a lesser degree, whatever amount the zeitgeist has moved to obstruct them (which is seldom much). The politicians seem controlled more than in control, now, and The Robber Barons does a good job of giving that sense I have been growing into some historical context.