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Title: The Teapot Dome Scandal: How Big Oil Bought the Harding White House and Tried to Steal the Country
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Manufacturer: Random House
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| The Teapot Dome Scandal: How Big Oil Bought the Harding White House and Tried to Steal the Country by Random House Some Things Never Change | McCartney writes with considerable skill and quite comprehensively of the domination of the oil industry of the American economy in the first third of the 20th century. Crimes were committed that went virtually unpunished, while oil executives thumbed their noses at feeble efforts of Congress to address the problem. It makes you wonder what else is new.
What we need now in this nation is a clone of Senator Thomas James Walsh (D-Mont) who might be willing to take on the military-industrial, oil dominated oligarchy that now controls our economy and our lives. Perhaps another Walsh could get the current Congress off its dying rear end and on its dying feet, but it would probably be met with the same indifference and/or impotence that was demonstrated in the 1920's.
I would be delighted to see Laton McCartney, with his research and analytical skills undertake such a project, in the hope that he might produce yet another articulate and fascinating analysis of the forces that continue to control our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. | | The Teapot Dome Scandal: How Big Oil Bought the Harding White House and Tried to Steal the Country by Random House Time Loop of Greed | | This excellent work shows how the names change, but the greed and corruption never do. A very entertaining account of an episode not well enough remembered, with many contemporary parallels. | | The Teapot Dome Scandal: How Big Oil Bought the Harding White House and Tried to Steal the Country by Random House THE TEAPOT DOME SCANDAL | I was interested in this book because it begins in my hometown, Ardmore, Oklahoma. Some things came out in the book that were unknown until its publication, even though it has been almost 90 years since the incidents in the book took place.
It tells an interesting story about the largest scandal in government to that time. It also shows how people have used the media and government to distort the truth for a long time in this country.
It is a facinating read. | | The Teapot Dome Scandal: How Big Oil Bought the Harding White House and Tried to Steal the Country by Random House Excellent example of "The more things change...." | | After seeing the author on The Daily Show, and having written advertising copy for oilfield-supply companies for 38 years, I HAD to get this book. I enjoyed it so much, despite my abhorrence of most non-fiction writing. This book is far from dry or dusty, as is so much n.f.. The characters are real, live people in these pages. Unfortunately, nothing much has changed since Teapot. Witness the bloodlust of the Bush/Cheney administration for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWAR) or the inability of Mr. Clinton to control his urges. This book has it all: money, power, sex, oil and a public that is largely unaware of the shenanigans taking place in Washington DC. | | The Teapot Dome Scandal: How Big Oil Bought the Harding White House and Tried to Steal the Country by Random House Warren Harding & company | Laton McCartney's new book, "The Teapot Dome Scandal" is a well-crafted look at the Harding White House and the tales of woe which followed it. Until Watergate, this was America's "finest" scandal, and one that would have brought down a president had he not had the good fortune of dying along the way. McCartney is detailed to a fault but his picture is thorough and worth every page.
Teapot Dome was about oil and politics and the comparisons to today's administration are not insignificant. President Harding, most believe, should never have been installed in that office and once he began, his administration unfolded rapidly. McCartney focuses in on the "baddies"...Albert Fall, Harding's Interior Secretary, being the worst of the lot. But oilmen Edward Doheny and Harry Sinclair round out the trio and their stories are riveting. Of course, there are good guys, too... the exposing of Teapot Dome would never have gotten very far without the persistence of Montana Senator, Thomas Walsh, whose brilliance unnerved many of his Republican colleagues. In the end, there were no winners, it seemed, and the "Roaring Twenties" flickered out just as the investigations came to an end.
McCartney has a crisp narrative style and although the cast of characters seems almost too big to keep track of without a scorecard, he keeps the story going resolutely. It's not hard to imagine that every generation or so, American politics gets down and dirty enough to have one of these scandals and one wonders at the end of the Bush administration if certain illegalities will come to light. Teapot Dome was the mother of them all, and McCartney's book is highly recommended. | | The Teapot Dome Scandal: How Big Oil Bought the Harding White House and Tried to Steal the Country by Random House Product Description | Mix hundreds of millions of dollars in petroleum reserves; rapacious oil barons and crooked politicians; under-the-table payoffs; murder, suicide, and blackmail; White House cronyism; and the excesses of the Jazz Age. The result: the granddaddy of all American political scandals, Teapot Dome.
In The Teapot Dome Scandal, acclaimed author Laton McCartney tells the amazing, complex, and at times ribald story of how Big Oil handpicked Warren G. Harding, an obscure Ohio senator, to serve as our twenty-third president. Harding and his so-called “oil cabinet” made it possible for the oilmen to secure vast oil 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 for the nation and for the principles in the plot to bilk the taxpayers: Harding’s administration was hamstrung; Americans’ confidence in their government plummeted; Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall was indicted, convicted, and incarcerated; and others implicated in the affair suffered similarly dire fates. Stonewalling by members of Harding’s circle kept a lid on the story–witnesses developed “faulty” memories or fled the country, and important documents went missing–but contemporary records newly made available to McCartney reveal a shocking, revelatory picture of just how far-reaching the affair was, how high the stakes, and how powerful the conspirators.
In giving us a gimlet-eyed but endlessly entertaining portrait of the men and women who made a tempest of Teapot Dome, Laton McCartney again displays his gift for faithfully rendering history with the narrative touch of an accomplished novelist. |
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