Very interesting on the history of oil in Texas. The first part of the book was fascinating: how oil was found using various combinations of money, luck, intelligence, and chutzpah. It's kind of technical, but Burroughs explains this key part of 20th c. Texas history in an engaging & clear way. ...
The book recounts the beginning of the Texas oil boom beginning with Spindletop outside of Beaumont, Texas. The discussion of how the Big Four (Roy Cullen, H. L. Hunt—bigamist, Sid Richardson, and Clint Murchison) independently wrestled their fortunes from the ground or from others was the most i...
I just finished reading the iBooks version of “Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco,” at 763 pages in my edition. Written in 1989 by two Wall Street Journal reporters - Bryan Burrough and John Helyar - the book recounts the 1988 leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco by KKR & Co. L. P. This...
Burrough, an award-winning financial journalist and Vanity Fair special correspondent, best known for Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco, switches gears to produce the definitive account of the 1930s crime wave that brought notorious criminals like John Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde...