The Rockefeller Syndrome

In this monumental study, Lundberg traces the illegal origins of the family fortune and follows its growth and effects down through today. He is at his best when he zeroes in on the grandsons: John the third, Laurance, Winthrop, Nelson and David. They are America’s shadowy guides with their fingers into hundreds of pies. And here is the carefully researched tale of who they are, how they operate and what they’re done with what they’re won. Won by inheritance, that is.

Nor does Lundberg neglect the Cousins: the great-grandchildren of John D. Senior, who will one day inherit it all.

THE ROCKEFELLER SYNDROME is no mere chit-chat biography. It is a wide-ranging study of wielded power and money in action. It is the chronicle of the on-going milking and deception of the American wage-earner and taxpayer. It explains clearly how those much-hailed philanthropies are but one more heavy burden on the inflation-laden, tax-weary backs of lower and middle-class America.

Ferdinand Lundberg’s IMPERIAL HEARST was the basis for the screenplay CITIZEN KANE. Other bestsellers include MODERN WOMEN: THE LOST SEX (in collaboration) and the book for which he is most noted, AMERICA’S SIXTY FAMILIES. This book was embraced by New Deal leaders and helped to shape the destiny of the Roosevelt Administration in its early years.

During World War II, Lundberg was an economist with the War Production Board and the War Shipping Administration. After the war, he served the Twentieth Century Fund as editor and began teaching—first at Finch College, New York, and then as Adjunct Professor of Social Philosophy at New York University. He took leave in 1965 to devote all his time to writing THE RICH AND THE SUPER-RICH, published in 1968. It became the number one bestselling book in the United States. It was translated and published in eight other countries and became number one in Germany for many months.

Mr. Lundberg completed his formal education at Columbia University, where he was awarded the B.Sc. and M.A.