A ROCKEFELLER FAMILY PORTRAIT

Three members of the Rockefeller family steal the show in this breezy volume: John D., founder of the Rockefeller fortune who, by penny-pinching, luck, financial brilliance, ruthlessness and Standard Oil, made himself in his prime, in 1913, worth nine hundred million dollars; his son John D. II, at 84 still known as "Junior," inheritor with his brothers of vast riches, part founder and chief administrator of the vast Rockefeller philanthropies, a shy, humorous man who has won the admiration of labor; his son Nelson, politician, philanthropist, sportsman, Governor of the State of New York and potential presidential candidate. Of other Rockefellers there are many in the book, all overshadowed by John D.: Big Bill, his father, a raffish cancer-doctor, his pious mother and his equally pious wife, his sons, daughter, grandsons and their wives and families. A remarkable clan, unimpressed by their wealth, they collect art, endow institutions, dislike blatant show, farm and hunt in many countries and through the Rockefeller Foundation send help to the ends of the earth; through Nelson they are dissolving the family sedateness and forgetting the family dislike of publicity. Sometimes repetitious but always readable, this study of one of America's great families is peculiarly timely in view of Nelson's political importance; the book should have a nation-wide appeal and find readers political and non-political, intelligent readers interested in good biography and the social applications of wealth.