I'd recommend Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. It covers the trials and tribulations as well as the brilliance and ruthless tactics taken to build Standard Oil.
Yeah it's a great book. It definitely gets into the weeds about his family and personal life (as a comprehensive biography should). Personally, I enjoyed that stuff, but if you just want to learn about how he did hard stuff as the OP described, it may be a bit thick at 600+ pages. That said, we summarized it in discussion form on our podcast if anyone is interested: http://businessbooksandco.com/episode/7b5d6ab9/titan-the-lif...
WoodenChair|1 year ago