This book is the story of four generations of Morgans and the powerful, secretive firms they spawned that would transform the modern financial world. Tracing the trajectory of J.P. Morgan's empire from its obscure beginnings in Victorian London to the financial crisis of 1987, the author paints a portrait of the family's private saga and the rarefied world of the American and British elite in which they moved, including Charles Lindbergh, Henry Ford, Franklin Roosevelt, Nancy Astor, and Winston Churchill. An account of a remarkable institution and the men who ran it, this book provides a look at the real power -- the money -- behind the historical events, the eminent statesmen, and the industrial empires that have transformed the world in the last century and a half.