In 1894, Abby Aldrich, the outgoing, impulsive daughter of Rhode Island’s Senator Nelson Aldrich, met Brown University student John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the shy and reserved heir to the Standard Oil fortune. This unlikely pair fell in love, but only seven years later did John feel confident enough to propose. Once married, Abby used her empathy, willingness to experiment, and defiant optimism to broaden John’s way of thinking and to expand his vision of what the Rockefeller fortune could do, shaping the family into a progressive force in philanthropy, the arts, and politics. Abby cherished and protected her six children — Babs, John III, Nelson, Laurance, Winthrop, and David — and inspired in them a desire to serve society. She helped open the nation’s eyes to modern art and in 1928, initiated the foundation of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. From behind the scenes Abby helped direct the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg and the building of Rockefeller Center. “Abby Aldrich Rockefeller was a legendary figure, a woman of great wealth and power who used them for great good — in often cunning ways. Astonishingly, no one has written her story before. Now Bernice Kert has done so in a sweeping, meticulous, original biography that illuminates a rare life, an historic family, and modern America.” — Catharine R. Stimpson, University Professor, Rutgers University “Bernice Kert can raise biography to a level of insight and surprise that matches the best fiction. Witness this study of a woman we think we know all about.” — Elizabeth Janeway, author of Man’s World, Woman’s Place “Bernice Kert’s thoroughly researched biography of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller is a welcome and wonderful read. Everyone interested in art and social history will want to read about this most progressive and interesting Rockefeller.” — Blanche Wiesen Cook, author of Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume I, 1884-1933 “[Reading] this biography, the life of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, is like reading an exciting mystery story. One can hardly wait to turn the page to find out what this extraordinary and fascinating woman did, not only for herself but for everything and everyone she touched, from her husband, to nature, to the opening of a new view into the art world. The vitality of Abby Rockefeller, as depicted here by Bernice Kert, is a lesson to all women.” — Brooke Astor “What might have been a kind of family mausoleum turns out to be a fascinating read, brimming with fresh material from unpublished archives and interviews with eyewitnesses. Bernice Kert’s thorough and engaging portrait brings to life an enormously influential American woman who had an historic impact on both her extraordinary family and the arts — as a pioneering collector and patron, and as the innovating founder of two major museums.” — J. Carter Brown, Director Emeritus, National Gallery of Art “Kert, despite all her exhaustive research, happily lets her subject retain all of her formidable vitality and independence... Kert deals not only with the couple’s marriage — which was, in spite of some strains, a lifelong love affair — and the six Rockefeller children, but also with Abby’s generous contributions to art, education, and politics, as well with as her role in creating Rockefeller Center and Colonial Williamsburg. A splendidly intelligent, very readable portrait of a woman who was as wise in the rearing of her family as in the spending of her great wealth.” — Kirkus Reviews “In this elegantly written, carefully researched and psychologically astute biography, Abby Rockefeller emerges as a loveable and intelligent woman who wielded her great privilege to a variety of socially beneficial ends.” — Publishers Weekly “Bernice Kert [has] an eye for offbeat biography... Kert’s penetrating close-up captures not only [Abby’s] remarkable personality but the suffocating nuances of post-Victorian matrimony; women readers in particular will relish Abby’s refusal to be pigeonholed.” — Ted Berkman, Los Angeles Times “A picture of a complex and engaging woman, one who was at once very much a part of her time and extraordinarily ahead of it... Although the Modern museum was at the heart of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller’s work... her interests were far ranging. They included the advancement of civil rights, historic preservation and education. The portrait of her in this book is that of a model aristocrat, a wealthy, well-bred woman who understood power and the creative, contemporary uses of the concept of noblesse oblige. Kert shows Abby Rockefeller to have been, in her way, very much a feminist.” — Robert Duffy, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Based on never–before used letters, diaries, and photographs from the Rockefeller Archive, The Rockefeller Women reveals the life of four generations of an extraordinary family: Eliza Davison Rockefeller, the Mother of John D., who instilled in her sons drive for success in business and Christian service; Laura Spelman Rockefeller, the wife of John D., the daughter of an Underground Railway operator and early supporter of racial freedom; Edith Rockefeller McCormick, the daughter of John D. and Laura, who became the queen of Chicago society, studied under Carl Jung and became a lay analyst; Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, the wife of John Jr. and mother of six children — Winthrop, Laurence, Nelson, John III, David and Babs — who helped found the Museum of Modern Art; Margaretta "Happy" Rockefeller whom married Nelson.

A pioneering philanthropist and daughter of American royalty reveals what it was like to grow up in one of the world’s most famous families. The great-granddaughter of John D. Rockefeller, Eileen Rockefeller learned in childhood that while wealth and fame could open any door, they could not buy a feeling of personal worth. The privileges of having servants and lavish summer homes were offset by her parents’ thoughtful yet firm lessons in social obligation, at times by her mother’s dark depressions and mercurial moods, and the competition for attention among her siblings. In adulthood, Rockefeller has yearned to be seen not as an icon but as a woman and mother with a normal life, and like all of us, she had to learn to find her own way. Being a Rockefeller, Becoming Myself is an affirmation of how family shapes our identity and the ways we contribute to the larger family of life, regardless of our origins.

A unique view of Hemingway, the man and the writer, through the women he loved and who loved him.

A landmark three-volume reference work documenting philanthropy and the nonprofit sector throughout American history, edited by the field's most widely recognized authority. Developed under the guidance of Dr. Dwight Burlingame of the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy, one of the nation's premier institutes for the study of philanthropy, the three-volume Philanthropy in America: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia is the definitive work on philanthropic, charitable, and nonprofit endeavors in the United States. The first section of the encyclopedia contains over 200 A–Z entries covering the lives of important philanthropists, the missions and practices of key institutions and organizations, and the impact of seminal events throughout the history of the nonprofit sector in America, from precolonial times to the present. Discussions of philanthropic traditions in ancient civilizations, in Europe during colonial times, and in countries around the world today provide fascinating contexts for understanding how the American philanthropic experience has developed. The encyclopedia also includes a collection of primary source documents (legislation, foundation reports, mission statements, etc.) for convenient review and further research.

This text examines the collection of feminist art in the Museum of Modern Art. It features essays presenting a range of generational and cultural perspectives.

What it was like to be as rich as Rockefeller: How a house gave shape and meaning to three generations of an iconic American family One hundred years ago America's richest man established a dynastic seat, the granite-clad Kykuit, high above the Hudson River. Though George Vanderbilt's 255-room Biltmore had recently put the American country house on the money map, John D. Rockefeller, who detested ostentation, had something simple in mind—at least until his son John Jr. and his charming wife, Abby, injected a spirit of noblesse oblige into the equation. Built to honor the senior Rockefeller, the house would also become the place above all others that anchored the family's memories. There could never be a better picture of the Rockefellers and their ambitions for the enormous fortune Senior had settled upon them. The authors take us inside the house and the family to observe a century of building and rebuilding—the ebb and flow of events and family feelings, the architecture and furnishings, the art and the gardens. A complex saga, The House the Rockefellers Built is alive with surprising twists and turns that reveal the tastes of a large family often sharply at odds with one another about the fortune the house symbolized.

This timely book holds up for scrutiny a great paradox at the core of the American Dream: a passionate belief in the principle of democracy combined with an equally passionate celebration of the creation of wealth. Americans treasure an open, equal society, yet we also admire those fortunate few who amass riches on a scale that undermines social equality. In today's era of "vulture capitalist" hedge fund managers, internet fortunes, and a growing concern over inequality in American life, should we cling to both parts of the paradox? Can we?/div To understand the problems that vast individual fortunes pose for democratic values, Robert Dalzell turns to American history. He presents an intriguing cast of wealthy individuals from colonial times to the present, including George Washington, one of the richest Americans of his day, the "robber baron" John D. Rockefeller, and Oprah Winfrey, for whom extreme wealth is inextricably tied to social concerns. Dalzell uncovers the sources of contradictory attitudes toward the rich, how the very rich have sought to be perceived as "good rich," and the facts behind the widespread notion that wealth and generosity go hand in hand. In a thoughtful and balanced conclusion, the author explores the cost of our longstanding attitudes toward the rich./divDIV DIV DIVAmong the case studies in America's Good Rich:/divDIVPuritan merchant Robert Keayne/divDIVGeorge Washington/divDIVManufacturers Amos & Abbot Lawrence/divDIVOil magnate John D. Rockefeller/divDIVBill Gates/divDIVWarren Buffet/divDIVSteve Jobs/divDIVOprah Winfrey/div

If economics is about the allocation of resources, then what is the most precious resource in our new information economy? Certainly not information, for we are drowning in it. No, what we are short of is the attention to make sense of that information. With all the verve and erudition that have established his earlier books as classics, Richard A. Lanham here traces our epochal move from an economy of things and objects to an economy of attention. According to Lanham, the central commodity in our new age of information is not stuff but style, for style is what competes for our attention amidst the din and deluge of new media. In such a world, intellectual property will become more central to the economy than real property, while the arts and letters will grow to be more crucial than engineering, the physical sciences, and indeed economics as conventionally practiced. For Lanham, the arts and letters are the disciplines that study how human attention is allocated and how cultural capital is created and traded. In an economy of attention, style and substance change places. The new attention economy, therefore, will anoint a new set of moguls in the business world—not the CEOs or fund managers of yesteryear, but new masters of attention with a grounding in the humanities and liberal arts. Lanham’s The Electronic Word was one of the earliest and most influential books on new electronic culture. The Economics of Attention builds on the best insights of that seminal book to map the new frontier that information technologies have created.