It is also a tale of greed and deception, as when the house bought unused rifles from the United States Government during the Civil War and promptly sold them back to the Army at six times the original price, or when, in the days before strong Federal regulation caught up with them, Morgan partners sold stock to friends at below-market prices before those securities were issued to the public. It is a story of noble triumphs, as when the Morgan partners led the effort to tap European money to build the American railroads, or when they mounted successful campaigns to keep Britain and Japan on the gold standard before World War II. Morgan Sr., the founder's son, learned to control American companies around the turn of the century by creating and dominating groups of their bondholders, or when, eight decades later, the three Morgan firms all learned to play the tough, slash-and-burn takeover game better than anyone else. It is a saga of incredible cunning, as when J. Chernow takes us on an extraordinary journey spanning generations and continents. Using the firm started by Junius Spencer Morgan - the firm that in the 1930's split into the commercial bank of Morgan Guaranty Trust, the investment bank of Morgan Stanley and the British merchant bank of Morgan Grenfell - Mr. With ''The House of Morgan,'' Ron Chernow, who once directed financial policy studies at the Twentieth Century Fund, provides just that, and much more. Even experts would welcome a calm, objective historical perspective. Who knows what's really happening on Wall Street? The huge buyouts, the big bankruptcies, the gyrating stock market, the tenuous dollar have everyone uneasy. An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance.
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