Historical Who's Who of the Automotive Industry in Europe Book

Cannadine has a difficult task - to write an entertaining yet accurate biography of a taciturn, boring man. Andrew Mellon was an immensely successful banker and businessman who subsequently became Treasury Secretary for eleven years and Ambassador to Great Britain for a year. Yet he seemed devoid of personality: cold, oblivious to the economic hardships and challenges faced by most Americans, calculating, disingenuous (as when repeatedly disavowed his continued involvement in his numerous businesses while was Treasury Secretary, a person devoid of being able to establish close, intimate relationships. His one marriage was a disaster: he married a woman twenty-three years younger than her, whom he barely knew, and who lived in a different country. His relations with his children were distant at best, acrimonious at worst - especially with his son Paul. He seemed to favor the daughter over the son. Not monetarily, but in how he relentlessly pressured Paul to go into banking and business, yet he financed his daughter Ailsa's transformation into a snobbish, greedy rich girl. He had no close personal friends. He simply lacked the capacity to show love towards others in a personal fashion.

He did leave a lasting mark on the country by establishing the National Gallery of Art, and - after his death - the National Portrait Gallery. He also, as he aged, contributed more and more of his money to philanthropic and charitable causes. He preferred to stay out of the limelight - both as a form of modesty but also as a way to keep people from learning of his business tactics. His tenure as Treasury Secretary was highly controversial as he did nothing to try to right the ship after the stock market crash in 1929 and the ensuing run on banks. The laissez-faire style that had worked for most of his life no longer was an adequate means to fix the nation's badly damaged economy. Mellon somehow could not see this - probably because he was born into relative affluence and was set up nicely by his father, Thomas Mellon, to succeed.

Cannadine seems to have somewhat of a political agenda as, in the last few chapters of the book, he takes a dim view of FDR and the New Deal. It does seem like his administration unfairly went after Mellon for supposed income tax evasions - that should not have occurred as Mellon did pay his taxes and was proud of doing so. But Cannadine seems to paint FDR as an evil tyrant out for revenge against Mellon and other financial titans. I am not sure that is wholly accurate. FDR did have an intense distrust of wealthy men like Mellon, but I really do not think that going after Mellon was a high priority item for him personally. Mellon's economic policies proved wholly inadequate for coping with the Great Depression, and his subsequent inaction did not help. FDR was elected in part as a repudiation of those policies. Also, the first 100 pages of the book is basically a biography about Mellon's dad, Thomas. While I absolutely understand how dominant of a force in Andrew's life Thomas was, I think that we could have been subjected to less details about Thomas and still have been able to glean a solid understanding of the environment in which Andrew grew up. Ultimately, I finished the book feeling ambivalent about both its subject and its author.