Laton McCartney is the author of the national bestseller Friends in High Places- The Bechtel Story-The Most Secret Corporation and How It Engineered the World and Across the Great Divide- Robert Stuart and the Discovery of the Oregon Trail. McCartney has written extensively on business, finance, and politics for many national magazines. He and his wife, Nancy, divide their time between Wyoming and New York.
“A terrific tale that resonates nearly a century on, at a time when
many people are still wondering about the connections between Big
Oil and politicians at the highest levels.”
–Jon Meacham, author of Franklin and Winston
“This is a story that has it all–a Jazz Age background, a
pleasure-loving president surrounded by booze and chorus girls,
boomtown capitalists from the Wild West, [and] conniving
politicians. . . . [Laton McCartney has] a certain zest for
Teapot’s sordid comedy [and] delivers fresh, arresting portraits of
the main players, some of them lovable rogues, others beady-eyed
scoundrels.”
–The New York Times
“The most thorough treatment of the scandals to date.”
–Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Titillating, tantalizing . . . The book reads like a novel.
McCartney’s cast of characters jumps off the page.”
–Baltimore Sun
“A cautionary tale of what happens when corrupt and indifferent
public officials give an industry undue influence over public
policy.”
–The Denver Post
“Fascinating reading.”
–St. Louis Post-Dispatch
McCartney (Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story) does an efficient job of narrating 20th-century America's first great federal corruption scandal. Petroleum preserves (or domes) were set aside on public lands in California and Wyoming, to be kept until needed by the navy. During 1921, President Harding's secretary of the interior, Albert Fall, took control of the lands from Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby and leased two domes-Teapot Dome in Wyoming and California's Elk Hills-to Harry Sinclair's Mammoth Oil Co. and Edward Doheny's Pan-American Petroleum and Transport Co., respectively. Concurrently, Fall received personal payments from the two men totaling $404,000, some of which he distributed to underlings who helped with the transactions. Scandal ensued, continuing through the presidency of Harding's successor, Calvin Coolidge. Congressional investigations were held; Coolidge appointed special prosecutors, and in 1929 a federal court found Fall guilty of bribery, fining him $100,000 and sentencing him to a year in prison. Though McCartney adds nothing new to the story, he has a solid grasp of it in this retelling. (Feb. 5) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.
"A terrific tale that resonates nearly a century on, at a time when
many people are still wondering about the connections between Big
Oil and politicians at the highest levels."
-Jon Meacham, author of Franklin and Winston
"This is a story that has it all-a Jazz Age background, a
pleasure-loving president surrounded by booze and chorus girls,
boomtown capitalists from the Wild West, [and] conniving
politicians. . . . [Laton McCartney has] a certain zest for
Teapot's sordid comedy [and] delivers fresh, arresting portraits of
the main players, some of them lovable rogues, others beady-eyed
scoundrels."
-The New York Times
"The most thorough treatment of the scandals to date."
-Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Titillating, tantalizing . . . The book reads like a novel.
McCartney's cast of characters jumps off the page."
-Baltimore Sun
"A cautionary tale of what happens when corrupt and indifferent
public officials give an industry undue influence over public
policy."
-The Denver Post
"Fascinating reading."
-St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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