Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.

Well, we're going to stop and talk a little bit about his father because, boy, is he interesting.

We've got our main source for this is a book called Titan by Ron Chernow.

So he talks a lot about his father, but we're going to start with the Rockefeller Archive Center.

And they classify him simply as an entrepreneur.

So let's just keep that in mind.

But in this book, Titan... really deep into this guy's life and he puts it maybe less less um high level and kind of vague and he really gets into it and he really draws on a lot of family documents just local records in a variety of different sources but newspapers talk about him and then there's just a lot of like interviews and word of mouth that was kind of passed down over time here but he started as a lumberman and a trader but then he kind of evolves into this peddler An unlicensed, and this is a quote, a botanic physician, a patent medicine vendor, land speculator, and then ultimately a con man.

So he is not stable by any stretch of the imagination from an occupation standpoint.

He's doing all of these different things, but ultimately he is not selling snake oil, but he is a, for lack of a better term, a snake oil salesman.