In the waning years of the 19th century, a devout Baptist from Cleveland, Ohio, quietly amassed one of the greatest fortunes in human history—not through spectacle or scandal, but through discipline, calculation, and relentless control of a single commodity: oil. John D. Rockefeller, as John T. Flynn recounts in God’s Gold, rose from modest beginnings to dominate American industry. In Flynn’s telling, Rockefeller was less a robber baron than a master builder—an architect of a new economic age. Where others saw chaos in the unregulated oil market, he saw opportunity for order. Through Standard Oil, he streamlined production, crushed inefficiencies, and stitched together a sprawling empire of pipelines, refineries, and trust-based agreements. Yet the same qualities that made him formidable also stirred unease. Reformers labeled him a monopolist. Journalists cast him as a symbol of greed. Eventually, the federal government intervened, dismantling his empire in 1911. But Flynn challenges the motives behind that antitrust victory, suggesting Rockefeller was less the villain reformers imagined and more a scapegoat for broader economic tensions. Even after his business peak, Rockefeller’s austere habits and deep faith never wavered. His wealth, Flynn argues, was not just in money but in the legacy of reshaped markets and redefined capitalism. God’s Gold doesn’t ask its readers to admire Rockefeller blindly—but it does ask them to understand the man behind the billions, and the moral code that quietly governed him.