Flagler: Rockefeller Partner and Florida Baron.

Kent: The Kent State University Press, (1988). Signed and Inscribed by the Author. Octavo, brown cloth (hardcover), gilt letters, xiii, 305 pp. Fine in a Fine, mylar protected dust jacket. From dust jacket: The gilded age businessman might be characterized as a saint or a sinner, robber baron or industrial statesman, philanthropist or exploiter. Henry Morrison Flagler has been called all of these, depending on the historian’s perspective. Yet most people would agree that whatever title applies, Flagler epitomizes the fulfillment of the American Dream. Edward N. Akin’s biography of Flagler explores both roles of the man who is hailed as a founder of Standard Oil and of modern Florida. Akin uses primary source material from Key West to Cleveland and from Saginaw to New York to present a full life of Flagler and to allow his business practices and personal life to be evaluated by the standards of his own day. Although most studies of the Standard Oil Company credit John D. Rockefeller with its rise to prominence as the world’s first great trust, none can overlook the crucial role played by Flagler during the 1870s and early 1880s, the period of Standard’s most critical -- and criticized -- growth. Flagler had the original idea for incorporating Standard Oil and is recognized as the chief architect and enforcer of such practices as rebates and drawbacks. As portrayed in the present discussion, Standard must be viewed as an enlarged partnership in its creative early years, not as the creation of one individual. But Flagler made his greatest and most visible impact on the American society and economy through his development of Florida’s east coast. His desire for a project that he could claim as uniquely his own, guided his investments and plans for this sparsely populated region. Flagler dominated the area: he owned millions of acres of land, established resort hotels along his Florida East Coast Railway, and extended his railroad to Key West, ninety miles from the mainland, at the dawning of the twentieth century. Other results of his handiwork include the re-creation of St. Augustine and the founding of Palm Beach and Miami. His desire to be immortalized thus forever altered the economic future of Florida, helping it earn the reputation as “the Sunshine State.” Akin provides equally intriguing glimpses of Flagler’s personal life -- the wives, the children, a controversial divorce, and more. Over a dozen photographs of Flagler, his family, and his Florida hotels round out the personal aspect of this biography...