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.
“The prelude to Winthrop Rockefeller’s rise in Arkansas” – Read an excerpt in the Arkansas Times.
John A. Kirk is the George W. Donaghey Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and the author or editor of ten books, including Beyond Little Rock: The Origins and Legacies of the Central High Crisis and Race and Ethnicity in Arkansas: New Perspectives.
501 Life Magazine Author of the Month: John Kirk
“John A. Kirk’s incisive new biography overturns the familiar view of Winthrop Rockefeller as an outsider who decamped from a world of incomparable privilege to an underdeveloped state where he forged an unlikely political legacy. Kirk demonstrates through dogged research and astute judgment that Rockefeller’s landmark service in Arkansas extended from his engagement in a broad range of undertakings from youth to adulthood. A readable and intriguing portrait of a figure whose prelude to power distinguished him from other southern leaders of the era.”
—Ben F. Johnson III, author of Arkansas in Modern America since 1930
“In this authoritative biography, Kirk delves into Rockefeller’s ‘prehistory,’ illuminating what forged the spirit of the man who left New York high society behind for the outskirts of Little Rock, and then changed Arkansas politics almost completely.”
—Barbara Shubinski, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York
“Winthrop Rockefeller’s lineage presented him with high expectations and responsibilities. While Winthrop’s path was unconventional, his unwavering resolve made a lasting difference in the world around him. In this definitive biography, John A. Kirk stitches together a treasure trove of family letters and other significant documents to depict Winthrop’s important place in history.”
—Marta M. Loyd, Winthrop Rockefeller Institute, Morrilton, Arkansas
“Kirk has produced a … sympathetic, deeply researched, and balanced account of Winthrop Rockefeller’s early life. … Kirk’s book does much to demolish the conventional view of Winthrop Rockefeller as a nonentity whose unhappy marriage and stormy divorce prompted him to leave New York and become a cattle rancher in Arkansas. What emerges instead is a portrait of an upper-class person who was something of a misfit in the world from which he came and found another one where he fit better as a result of the larger changes in American life associated with the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.”
—David Stebenne, Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Spring 2022
“John A. Kirk’s detailed biography of Winthrop Rockefeller, the fifth child and fourth son of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Abigail Greene Aldrich Rockefeller, sets out to document this future Arkansas governor’s attempts to define himself within one of the richest families in the United States. … in accounting for the twists and turns of Rockefeller’s life leading up to his time in that state, Kirk has provided an excellent examination of this Arkansawyer.”
—Kenneth J. Bindas, Journal of Southern History, April 2023
