NATIONAL BESTSELLER
The definitive full-scale portrait of J. Pierpont Morgan's tumultuous life, both in and out of the public eye
History has remembered him as a complex and contradictory figure, part robber baron and part patron saint. J. Pierpont Morgan earned his reputation as "the Napoleon of Wall Street" by reorganizing the nation's railroads and creating industrial giants such as General Electric and U.S. Steel. At a time when the country had no Federal Reserve system, he appointed himself a one-man central bank. He had two wives, three yachts, four children, six houses, mistresses, and one of the finest art collections in America. In this extraordinary book, drawing extensively on new material, award-winning biographer Jean Strouse vividly portrays the financial colossus, the avid patron of the arts, and the entirely human character behind all the myths.
Praise for "Morgan"
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"Magnificent . . . the fullest and most revealing look at this remarkable, complex man that we are likely to get."--"The Wall Street Journal"
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"A masterpiece . . . No one else has told the tale of Pierpont Morgan in the detail, depth, and understanding of Jean Strouse."--Robert Heilbroner, "Los Angeles Times Book Review"
"It is hard to imagine a biographer coming any closer to perfection."--"St. Louis Post-Dispatch"
"Strouse is in full command of Pierpont Morgan's personal life, his financial operations, his collecting, and his benefactions, and presents a rich, vivid picture of the background against which they took place. . . . A magnificent biography.""--The New York Review of Books "
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"With uncommon intelligence, maturity, and psychological insight, "Morgan: American Financier" is that rare masterpiece biography that enables us to penetrate the soul of a complex human being.""--The Philadelphia Inquirer"

Winner of the Bancroft Prize for American History.

The only comprehensive biography of the astute observer and diarist Alice James, whose life and legacy were long overshadowed by her two famous brothers, William and Henry James.

Alice James is perhaps best known as the sister of Henry James, the novelist, and William James, “the father of American psychology.” Few readers were familiar with Alice’s own life―until Jean Strouse’s Alice James.

This illuminating, insightful biography takes us into the hidden life of this extraordinary woman. Despite her struggles with a variety of psychological and physical disorders, and with the limited options facing nineteenth-century women, James was articulate, politically radical, witty, and highly intelligent. She found her voice in a diary she kept until her death from breast cancer in 1892.

Strouse’s enthralling portrait not only introduces a little-known figure from the American past but casts new light on the history of American women and on the other members of the country’s most prominent intellectual family.