Thomas Mellon and his times

by Thomas Mellon

In 1885, Thomas Mellon published his autobiography in a limited edition exclusively for his family, warning them that it contained "nothing which it concerns the public to know, and much which if writing for it I would have omitted." Mellon was an anomaly among the great American entrepreneurs of his time. Highly literate and an excellent narrative writer, he was deadly honest about his life, family, and financial success. The book his warning so effectively concealed for almost 110 years was a masterpiece of American autobiography, and it is now available for virtually the first time in this edition. At the time he looked back on his life, Mellon was a successful Pittsburgh entrepreneur and banker. In the next generation, two of his sons, Andrew William Mellon and Richard Beatty Mellon, joined Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller as the four wealthiest men in the United States, and his descendants would play major roles in American business, art, and philanthropy. Nothing in Thomas Mell