You may have to register before you can download all our books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
In this amazing and at times ribald story, Laton McCartney tells how Big Oil handpicked Warren G. Harding, an obscure Ohio senator, to serve as our twenty-third president. Harding and his “oil cabinet” made it possible for cronies to secure vast fuel reserves that had been set aside for use by the U.S. Navy. In exchange, the oilmen paid off senior government officials, bribed newspaper publishers, and covered the GOP campaign debt. When news of the scandal finally emerged, the consequences were disastrous. Drawing on contemporary records newly made available to McCartney, The Teapot Dome Scandal reveals a shocking, revelatory picture of just how far-reaching the affair was, how high the stakes, and how powerful the conspirators–all told in a dazzling narrative style.
“Riveting . . . exemplifies how business works by exploiting personal connections.”—Businessweek The Bechtel Group is a private company that shuns the limelight, yet it is one of the prime movers-and-shakers in the global economic arena. Founded by self-made millionaire Warren A. Bechtel as a risk-taking construction and engineering firm, the multibillion-dollar, multinational conglomerate is responsible for constructing the Hoover Dam, laying the Alaskan oil pipeline, and building half of the world’s nuclear power plants, for starters. But Bechtel did not complete these ambitious projects on its own; it did so with the help of such “friends” as Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Dw...
Resurrecting a pivotal moment in American history, Across the Great Divide tells the triumphant never-before-told story of the young Scottish fur trader and explorer who discovered the way West, changing the face of the country forever. In the heroic tradition of Stephen Ambrose's Undaunted Courage comes the story of Robert Stuart and his trailblazing discovery of the Oregon Trail. Lewis and Clark had struggled across the high Rockies in present-day Montana and Idaho, but their route had been too perilous for wagon trains to follow. Then, six years after the Corps of Discovery returned from the Pacific, Stuart found the route that would make westward migration possible. Setting out in 1812 o...
An anthology of some of the most evocative writing focusing on our vast natural heritage, along with pieces that address pressing land issues facing the West. This collection not only paints a vivid portrait of life in the Rocky Mountains, it also presents some of the finest nonfiction writing to be found in America today. This is a perfect selection that is bound to sink reader's roots deeper in the landscape of home.
In 1963, he began work as a civil engineer working on the California State Water Project, and he went on to develop large energy projects throughout the worldcapping his career working with Bechtel on the Big Dig in Boston. Energy Reality reveals how energy, politics, and power are intertwined. Highlights include power struggles between United States of America and Russia/the Soviet Union to be the worlds largest producer of petroleum, which began after the Rothschilds took a shortcut through the Suez Canal, secretly opening the Asian market to kerosene; John Watson Foster, his son-in-law, Robert Lansing, and Uncle Berts two nephews, John Foster and Allen Dulles, who made certain that Sullivan & Cromwell clients retained control of Middle East oil; and Germany and Japan and how they were excluded from sharing oil wealth from the Middle East. The author also examines five postwar oil crises, including the taking of American hostages in Iran by the Khomeini regime in 1979, and how Vladimir Putin is seeking to turn Russia into a powerful petro state.
An explosive, newsbreaking look at America's largest private company, Friends in High Places blends painstaking research and powerful reportage. Reveals how The Bechtel Group changed the face of the globe--with the help of friends like Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Caspar Weinberger. Black-and-white photos.
Offering insight into turn-of-the-century American politics, economic development, and environmental policy, a penetrating study of the Teapot Dome scandal focuses on the role of Albert B. Fall, who became the first American cabinet member sent to prison. UP.
The tale of the Bechtel family dynasty is a classic American business story. It begins with Warren A. 'Dad' Bechtel, who led a consortium that constructed the Hoover Dam. From that auspicious start, the family and its eponymous company would go on to 'build the world,' from the construction of airports in Hong Kong and Doha, to pipelines and tunnels in Alaska and Europe, to mining and energy operations around the globe. Today Bechtel is one of the largest privately held corporations in the world, enriched and empowered by a long history of government contracts and the privatization of public works, made possible by an unprecedented revolving door between its San Francisco headquarters and Washingto
A look at what really happened in the U.S. Veterans’ Bureau Scandal in the 1920s. In the early 1920s, as the nation recovered from World War I, President Warren G. Harding founded the U.S. Veterans Bureau, now known as the Department of Veterans Affairs, to treat disabled veterans. He appointed his friend, decorated veteran Colonel Charles R. Forbes, as founding director. Forbes lasted only eighteen months in the position before stepping down under a cloud of suspicion. In 1926—after being convicted of conspiracy to defraud the federal government by rigging government contracts—he was sent to Leavenworth Penitentiary. Although he was known in his day as a drunken womanizer, and as a co...
In 1952 and 1953 as he wandered around America, Jack Kerouac jotted down spontaneous prose poems, or "sketches" as he called them, on small notebooks that he kept in his shirt pockets. The poems recount his travels—New York, North Carolina, Lowell (Massachusetts, Kerouac’s birthplace), San Francisco, Denver, Kansas, Mexico—observations, and meditations on art and life. The poems are often strung together so that over the course of several of them, a little story—or travelogue—appears, complete in itself. Published for the first time, Book of Sketches offers a luminous, intimate, and transcendental glimpse of one of the most original voices of the twentieth century at a key time in his literary and spiritual development.