Memoirs » (Reprint)

David Rockefeller was chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the Chase bank for many years. He has since retired and currently sits on many project and charity boards. He lives in New York City.

Born into one of the wealthiest families in America—he was the youngest son of Standard Oil scion John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and the celebrated patron of modern art Abby Aldrich Rockefeller—David Rockefeller has carried his birthright into a distinguished life of his own. His dealings with world leaders from Zhou Enlai and Mikhail Gorbachev to Anwar Sadat and Ariel Sharon, his service to every American president since Eisenhower, his remarkable world travels and personal dedication to his home city of New York—here, the first time a Rockefeller has told his own story, is an account of a truly rich life.

The New Yorker

As a scion of one of America's most powerful families, a globetrotting business "statesman," a former C.E.O. of Chase Bank, and an important player in the development of downtown Manhattan, David Rockefeller is an emblematic figure of a world that no longer really exists: the world of the Wasp ascendancy. An inveterate networker among policymakers, intellectuals, and corporate leaders, he seems to have been driven by an almost naïve faith in noblesse oblige, and there's something refreshingly nineteenth-century about this entertaining memoir as well. Rockefeller's style is restrained and self-deprecating; the account of his attempts to modernize and globalize Chase makes for excellent business history, and his sketch of his complicated relationship with his brothers is especially convincing. What may be most striking, however, is Rockefeller's resolute internationalism and his commitment to institutions like the U.N. -- a healthy reminder that there was a time when the Republican Party did not see "multilateralism" as a dirty word.