Excerpt:
In the fall of 1920, Andrew Mellon was 65 years old and one of the richest men in the world. Instead of basking in the wealth he had amassed as a banker and financier, Mellon accepted a summons from President-elect Warren G. Harding and got on a train to Marion, Ohio. Unaccompanied by staff, Mellon trudged alone for a mile to Harding's house. A reporter saw him arrive. "Great Scott," he exclaimed. "Isn't that Andrew Mellon of Pittsburgh?"
That visit to Marion started a late-in-life second career for Mellon. Harding liked Mellon's conservative views on economic policy and selected him as his secretary of the Treasury, a job he would hold until early 1932. Mellon served through Harding's administration, then continued in the post under Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover, making Mellon the only person to lead the Treasury during three different administrations. The change when Franklin D. Roosevelt became president in 1933 was stunning: Roosevelt attacked the former Treasury secretary via an unjust prosecution.
Greg Steinmetz, a former reporter at this newspaper, tells the story of that shocking turn in "The President and the Oligarch," a lively history of Mellon's consequential interactions with four presidents...