Henry Flagler: The Astonishing Life and Times of the Visionary Robber Baron Who Founded Florida

by David Leon Chandler

"An unsentimental and unaffected account of how the outnumbered RAF fought the Luftwaffe to a standstill during the summer and early autumn of 1940 ...A wide-ranging, painstakingly documented and comprehensive appreciation of a turning-point engagement." Kirkus Reviews. Forty pages of photographs.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, History

324 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1986

About the author

American journalist who wrote several historical and biographical books.

In 1962 he and his team won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for investigating and exposing corruption.

He was associated with early coverage of the Kennedy Assassination and was mentioned in the Warren Commission report.

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting look at the life of Henry Flagler, a Gilded Age robber baron who struck it rich with oil and eventually made the state of Florida the place that it came to be as we know it today.

Flagler was astonishingly close-mouthed about his life and gave very short, succinct answers when interviewed by reporters. His life was extremely full and never boring. With John D. Rockefeller, he founded Standard Oil and became remarkably wealthy. His interests later veered towards the railroad and with it, he opened up access to the state of Florida. He was married three times. His first wife died tragically. His second wife went insane, believing herself to be in love with the Czar of Russia and that he reciprocated that love. Following his divorce from her, Flagler found a sort happiness with a younger woman.

In this book, his business affairs are fully covered. Some of this can get boring. Some of it, like the section about his hotels in Florida, was extremely interesting. I am definitely glad I read this. Flagler was never more than just a name in the background to me, especially with such luminous names such as Rockefeller always stealing the limelight. With this book, he has come to the forefront in my estimation as a power in his own right.

Very good reading.

[Jenny Vazquez · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was interested in learning more about Henry Flagler after learning much about his success in Florida but I found this book a little boring to me. It’s an interesting read, but it just wasn’t for me.

[Betsy · Rating 3 out of 5]

History of development of east coast of Florida from St. Augustine to Key West. Also interesting family history of Flagler in appendices.

[l b r · Rating 3 out of 5]

Content ***
Length ***
Style ***
“Really?” Factor ****

If you want to know about Florida this is the guy.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a superb biography of one of the most significant businessmen in American history, who you've probably never heard of. Henry Flagler was John D. Rockefeller's most significant business partner at Standard Oil. The case can be made that Flagler was the intellectual genius who devised both the overall concepts and the details of the company policies and programs that turned Standard Oil into the most feared, powerful, and profitable company of the 19th and early 20th century. Rockefeller himself certainly thought so, and credits Flagler for such ideas as the anti-competitive rebate deals with railroads, the effort to buy out and absorb nearly all of their refinery competitors, and the idea to incorporate as a trust so that the various Standard companies in each state could follow common policies and secretly be one intergrated business entity. At the time, corporations could not own businesses in other states or have operations under their own name that crossed state lines. Flagler's brilliant (and at the time illegal, so therefore secret) idea was to put all the shares for the hundreds of separate companies into a common trust, under the control of one board of directors.

But whereas Rockefeller's business history and fortune pretty much begins and ends with Standard Oil, Flagler's Standard Oil career is far less important than what he accomplished in Florida between 1885 and his death in 1913. Essentially, he built modern Florida. He built railroads that extended from St. Augustine and Jacksonville all the way down to nearly unpopulated swamp areas that are now Palm Beach and Miami, and then out to Key West, crossing over 120 miles of open ocean and small islands. He brought in settlers, provided them with land and resources to begin farms and businesses, bailed them out when bad frosts and hurricanes ruined the crops and buildings, and built infrastructure for all of those communities along the eastern shore of Florida. He also built massive hotels and popularized Florida as a great winter vacation spot for both the wealthy and the middle class. Astoundingly, he never received ANY government funding for this, and it seems that he never really made an actual profit from his efforts, nor did he expect to. Flagler ran his Florida business ventures as a personal corporation, and any money he made went right back into new railroad, farm, and civic investments. He didn't even need to take out any loans to do any of this until he started pushing the railroad to Key West. It is truly amazing, and a private citizen certainly couldn't accomplish all this today.

Flagler wasn't an angel. The author cites many episodes of his bribing legislatures, his paternalism, racist and elitist views that were standard for his time, and his forcing Florida to enact a divorce law almost solely for his benefit so that Flagler could divorce his insane second wife and marry a lady 37 years his junior ten days later.

The author David Chandler did tremendous research, and I have a lot of respect for his efforts. He went through some pretty obscure archives to make sure he got the facts correct. Chandler's succinct summary of exactly how Rockefeller and Flagler turned Standard Oil into the frist massive corporation it became is actually clearer, in my opinion, than Ron Chernow's depiction of the same events in his masterpiece biography of John D. Rockefeller (Titan, my favorite bio of all time:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16...

The book ultimately rates four stars because the writing is a bit weaker than Chernow's in many areas. The author frequently goes on irrelevant tangets and occasionally the prose is clunky or hokey. There are quite a few useless rhetorical questions for my taste, for what purpose I don't know.

Still, a great biography of an American who should be better remembered.

Picked this up for FREE at a discard bin at the Mission Viejo Library.

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

During a trip to Florida to visit family, my husband and I took a day trip to St. Augustine. I'd been there before and I remembered some of the city's history as a Spanish settlement and the oldest European-established city in the United States. I also was aware of some of St. Augustine's tourist-focused "history" - e.g., the "Fountain of Youth" - thanks to Tony Horwitz's book A Voyage Long and Strange. But what I hadn't been aware of was St. Augustine's legacy as a Gilded Age winter resort, and the fact that that identity was entirely due to the work of one man, Henry Flagler, a Gilded Age millionaire who made his fortune as a co-founder of Standard Oil. Not only did Flagler develop St. Augustine, building two of the most luxurious hotels in the country at the time, both of which are still standing (although used for other purposes), but he repeated his work in St. Augustine all down the eastern coast of Florida, building a railroad that stretched all the way to Key West, and developing resort towns, some of which are now famous - Palm Beach, Miami. I was fascinated by how much Flagler had done and how little I had heard of it.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having been raised in Florida, I was familiar with the name of Flagler. However, I didn't know that not only was he just as much the genius behind Standard Oil as John D. Rockefeller, but he almost single-handedly "gave birth" to the state of Florida. This was a great biography of an influential and extremely generous captain of industry.

[Miss Lemon · Rating 4 out of 5]

story of a mulit millionaire and his skill, vision, and determination in making Florida a habital state. Fascinating that he managed it all in the late 1800 early 1900s!! Lots of letter entries as well as newspaper articles so seems as accurate as it could get.

[Pat evert · Rating 4 out of 5]

The sub-title says it all! A really interesting book. don't underestimate how interesting a history of Florida can be!