My highlights from the book:

1. Morgan was the most influential of these businessmen. He wasn’t the richest but that didn’t matter; he was commanding in a way none could match. 

2. He was comfortable in his dominion, though never with his fame. 

3. Morgan had an aristocrat’s disdain for public sentiment and the conviction that his actions were to the country’s advantage, no explanations necessary. 

4. Roosevelt thought big business was not only inevitable but essential. He also believed it had to be accountable to the public, and Roosevelt considered himself the public. 

5. Each [Morgan and Roosevelt] presumed he could use his authority to determine the nation’s course. Each expected deference from the other along the way. 

6. The president wanted to assert the primacy of government over business.

7. The financier thought that was needless, even dangerous. 

8. “I’m afraid of Mr. Roosevelt because I don’t know what he’ll do,” Morgan said. “He’s afraid of me because he does know what I’ll do,” Roosevelt replied. 

9. Roosevelt and Morgan were bound for conflict. Roosevelt believed American capitalism needed a guiding hand. So did Morgan. Each assumed it should be his own. 

10. Morgan had trusted his father to set him on the right path and steer his career, even when his father was overbearing, Morgan never mounted a challenge. The creator of the biggest companies the world had ever known was very much the creation of paternal influence. 

11. Taking charge would become a lifetime impulse—one that Pierpont would have to curb around his father for years.

12. I [Morgan] am never satisfied until I either do everything myself or personally supervise everything done.

13. He [Morgan] would concentrate intensely, then arrive at a decision, dispatch instructions, and move on. That focus was his genius, but it was the genius of a monarch not a democrat. 

14. Morgan said he could do a year’s work in nine months, but not twelve. His impatience could be withering. 

15. Roosevelt adopted his father’s motto, “Get action.” 

16. Roosevelt would become a man of extreme enthusiasm and vitality. He read with near-total recall and soaked up information from everyone. 

17. Roosevelt never sat when he could stand. When provoked, he would thrust, and when he hit, he hit hard. 

18. Roosevelt was forever at it. He was a curiosity, always pushing and straining and admonishing friends around him to do the same. 

19. Theodore loved to row in the hottest sun, over the roughest water, in the smallest boat. 

20. Roosevelt promised he “would obey no boss and serve no clique.”

21. When they attacked Roosevelt, he would fire back with all the venom imaginable. “He was the most indiscreet guy I ever met.”

22. [Roosevelt’s wife and mother die on the same day] Theodore drew a big black X on that page in his diary and wrote: “The light has gone out of my life.” 

23. Morgan couldn’t let business rivalries bankrupt an industry so essential to the nation’s promise—and to his position in the financial world. He decided to establish his own commission to encourage the railroad men to cooperate instead of compete. He wanted to fix prices, spread profits, and ensure dividends. 

24. When one of the gentlemen complained later about Morgan’s interference in their roads, Morgan snapped: “Your roads? Your roads belong to my clients.” 

25. John D. Rockefeller said his company was efficient. Critics said it was untouchable. 

26. Even as antitrust laws won support throughout the country, clever minds were hard at work devising ways around them. The state could pass a sweeping law permitting one corporation to hold the stock of any other—an idea once considered a conflict of interest. New Jersey conjured the holding company into existence, a feat for which critics dubbed it a “traitor state.”

27. James J. Hill had built the Great Northern with deliberate thrift and brutal efficiency. His railroad would become among the most profitable in the Northwest. He didn’t need Morgan the way other railroad executives did. 

28. “A soft, easy life is not worth living, it impairs the fiber of brain and heart and muscle. We must dare to be great.”, Roosevelt said. 

29. Roosevelt’s aim, he wrote later, was to break down the secrecy that allowed the “invisible empire” of politicians and high capitalists to thrive. 

30. Platt recognized the limits of his control over Roosevelt. “I can’t do what I want with him, he is willful as Hell.” 

31. E. H. Harriman threatened to retaliate: “Very well, then, this is an invasion of Union Pacific territory, a hostile act, and you will have to take the consequences.” Harriman secretly bought up shares in Northern Pacific. This was revenge. Hill and Morgan had effective control over the Northern Pacific, but they didn’t own a majority of the shares. Morgan had never found it necessary to own a company outright in order to exert influence. 

32. No one around Morgan believed a raid on Morgan company in the open market would succeed. They couldn’t imagine who would dare. Harriman dared. 

33. Roosevelt consumed nearly a gallon of coffee a day. 

34. If Roosevelt had a spare moment, he turned to a book.

35. Roosevelt protested that he didn’t need bodyguards. He carried his own revolver.

36. Roosevelt trained with wrestlers, boxers, and jiujitsu masters. 

37. Roosevelt promised the working class, and signaled to big business, that the government would not be a spectator in the new economy. 

38. He had considered Roosevelt a gentleman. Now he called the president a “lunatic.” Roosevelt had changed the rules on the sly. Morgan would never forgive him. 

39. The president had some choice words for Hill, expressed privately. “He detests me, but I admire him,” Roosevelt said. “He will detest me much more before I am done with him.”

40. After Morgan left, Roosevelt marveled at the financier’s imprudence. “That is the most illuminating illustration of the Wall Street point of view. Mr. Morgan could not help regarding me as a big rival operator, who either intended to ruin all his interests or else could be induced to come to an agreement to ruin none.” 

41. Roosevelt understood how panic could outrun reality. 

42. In between stops, Roosevelt read the forty books he ordered for the trip. 

43. Morgan repeated the advice he had received from his father long ago: “There may be times when things are dark and cloudy in America, when uncertainty will cause some to distrust and others to think there is too much production, too much building of railroads, and too much development in other enterprises. In such times, and at all times, remember that the growth of that vast country will take care of all.”