Winthrop Rockefeller

<p><b>Winner 2024 J. G. Ragsdale Book Award Arkansas Historical Association</b></p> <p><b>Winner 2024 Booker Worthen Literary Prize</b></p> Why did Winthrop Rockefeller scion of one of the most powerful families in American history leave New York for an Arkansas mountaintop in the 1950s? In this richly detailed biography of the former Arkansas governor John A. Kirk delves into the historical record to fully unravel that mystery for the first time. Kirk pursues clues threaded throughout Rockefeller's life tracing his family background childhood and education; his rise in the oil industry from roustabout to junior executive; his military service in the Pacific during World War II including his involvement in the battles of Guam Leyte and Okinawa; his postwar work in race relations health education and philanthropy; his marriage to and divorce from Barbara Bobo Sears; and the birth of his only child future Arkansas lieutenant governor Win Paul Rockefeller. This careful examination of Winthrop Rockefeller's first forty-four years casts a powerful new light on his relationship with his adopted state where his legacy continues to be felt more than half a century after his governorship.