Harry Oppenheimer

This book will surely be the most readable, best informed, most complete account of Harry Oppenheimer's life there is ever likely to be.' – Bill Nasson, historian and author

As chairman of Anglo American and De Beers, Harry Oppenheimer held sway over his family's gold and diamond empire for a quarter of a century. He combined a passion for commerce with a streak of creative genius.

In this, the first comprehensive biography of Oppenheimer, Michael Cardo has produced a vivid portrait based on unrestricted access to his subject's private papers and interviews with Oppenheimer's relatives and associates.

Cardo brings to life the places, people and events that shaped Oppenheimer's career at the intersection of business and politics. From the diamond fields of Kimberley, where his father, Ernest, arrived to seek his fortune in 1902, through his long apprenticeship as heir apparent, to Harry Oppenheimer's emergence on the world stage as a magnate and monarch in his own right – the 'King of Diamonds' and the man with the Midas touch – Cardo tells the story of a dynasty.

As a financier, philanthropist and public figure, Oppenheimer straddles the history of 20th-century South Africa. In the 1950s the National Party regarded him as a threat to Afrikanerdom, the sinister embodiment of English 'money power'. Forty years later, Nelson Mandela praised Oppenheimer as a nation-builder, a key figure in South Africa's transition to democracy. Yet nowadays, Oppenheimer is demonised in some quarters as the archetype of 'white monopoly capital' and blamed, in part, for democracy's disappointing dividends.

Meticulously researched and superbly written, this authoritative work sheds new light on the multifaceted legacy of a renowned South African industrialist.