Tycoons and Business Dynasties

How Rockefeller built Standard Oil, faced its breakup and gave his fortune away.

Howard Hughes as aviator, film producer and Las Vegas hotel owner, and his decline.

Carnegie's rise from a bobbin boy of thirteen to the richest man in the world.

Vanderbilt's rise through ferries, steamships and railroads.

An industrial philosophy of mass production, written at the height of the Model T.

The hostile Depression-era life that Nevins was commissioned to answer.

How Vanderbilt, Gould, Rockefeller, Morgan and others built 19th-century fortunes.

The scholarly life of Carnegie, from Dunfermline and the railroad to steel.

Charles Schwab's rise from Carnegie's mill to head US Steel, then build Bethlehem.

Sunday Times Insight team; the most rigorously reported of the lives.

Howard Hughes's hidden empire, revealed through his own memos.

Aristotle Onassis's deals, his affairs and his feud with Stavros Niarchos.

Three generations of Fords, Henry, Edsel and Henry II, and their company.

Four generations of the family and the succession that nearly sank the company.

The authorised life of J. R. D. Tata, who ran the Tata group for fifty years.

Six men and the mechanics of how post-Soviet wealth was assembled.

Henry Ford as a shaper of American culture as much as of its industry.

Samuel Zemurray rose from selling ripe bananas to taking over United Fruit.

Joseph P. Kennedy's life in banking, film, the stock market and politics.

Insider account of doing deals through Party patronage, and losing everything.

The major revisionist defence written against Tarbell.

The life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, strongest on his steamboat years.

The man who invented the regulated-return utility bargain, and the holding company that killed him.

The life of Aristotle Onassis, written while he lived and with his cooperation.

The family and trusts that outlived the operating company.

The life of Aristotle Onassis, written the year after his death.

Three generations of Rockefellers and how the fortune passed down.

How the Vanderbilt heirs spent and scattered the family fortune.

The R.J. Reynolds tobacco fortune and the scandals of the heirs who followed.

Memoir of the man who ran the Hughes empire day to day.

The takeover battles that assembled the group under Arnault.

Howard Hughes's public and private life, in a biography disputed on its sources.

The standard biography of the first four decades.

The only dedicated English biography; stops before the handover.

Profiles of the family houses that still dominate the index.

The life of Howard Hughes, drawn from archives.

Robert Friedland and the Voisey's Bay nickel discovery.

The next generation of Canada's business owners after the old Establishment.

Robert Wood Johnson, who put public trust before profit, and the origin of the Credo.

Boris Berezovsky and the businessmen who looted Russia after the Soviet collapse.

The love affair of shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis and the singer Maria Callas.

Redstone's memoir and his own case for buying and then shedding Blockbuster.

How Henry Ford published The International Jew, a book the Nazis spread.

Howard Hughes's life told through his own diaries, memos and letters.

The financial engineering behind News Corp, traced by a forensic reporter.

John Malone and TCI; the cable industry Comcast consolidated.

Harsher on the gap between Carnegie's preaching and his practice.

Henry Ford and his son Edsel, and how the father undermined his own successor.

Structural argument about how the papers trade coverage for political favour.

The life of Jamsetji Tata, founder of the Tata group, and the origins of its trusts.

Aristotle Onassis's feud with the Kennedys, resting on a disputed central claim.

The life of William Lever, who built Sunlight soap and the branded-goods model.

How the Homestead strike turned Carnegie and Frick's partnership into a feud.

Carnegie, Rockefeller, Gould and Morgan and the economy they built

The life of Julius Rosenwald, the merchant who built a mail-order empire.

Modern rival to Stiles, two years earlier

Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller, and the collision between the two.

Fifty hours of interviews plus the family; the closest to authorised.

The rise and fall of the Texas oil fortunes, the Hunts among them.

Marc Rich, the founder of modern commodity trading.

Henry Clay Frick: Carnegie's partner, the Homestead Strike and his philanthropy.

Gina Rinehart's iron ore fortune, its royalties and the family's control of it.

Rupert Murdoch's political power, arguing his politics drove his business.

A history of the Tata family and the business group they built.

Founder's account of building Firestone; business sense from the tyre trade

Narrative of the American West's mining and railroad fortunes

Illustrated family survey.

The French original of the above.

Turner Broadcasting, absorbed by Time Warner in 1996.

Insider memoir by his personal assistant; domestic detail, little business.

Insider account: Arnault interview book; French only.

Marcus Wallenberg and the bank-industry structure that still controls Swedish capital.

J. G. Boswell and the secret farming empire he ran in the heart of California.

Family history rather than company analysis; gossipy in tone.

Tight narrative of the Model T years; the best short account.

The four Koch brothers' lives and their business, social and political ambitions.

Family memoir of a brewer undone partly by its distribution position.

Carlos Slim, telecoms concessions and the economics of a licensed monopoly.