Book description
The oil industry in the United States has been the subject of
innumerable histories. But books on the development of the natural gas
industry and the electricity industry in the U. S. are scarce.
Edison to Enron
is a readable flowing history of two of America's largest and most
colorful industries.
It begins with the story of Samuel Insull, a poor
boy from England, who started his career as Thomas Edison's right-hand
man, then went on his own and became one of America's top
industrialists. But when Insull's General Electric's energy empire
collapsed during the Great Depression, the hitherto Great Man was
denounced and prosecuted and died a pauper. Against that backdrop, the
book introduces Ken Lay, a poor boy from Missouri who began his career
as an aide to the head of Humble oil, now part of Exxon Mobil. Lay
went on to become a Washington bureaucrat and energy regulator and
then became the wunderkind of the natural gas industry in the
1980s with Enron.
To connect the lives of these two energy giants, Edison to
Enron takes the reader through the flamboyant history of the
American energy industry, from Texas wildcatters to the great pipeline
builders to the Washington wheeler-dealers.
From the Reviews...
"This scholarly work fills in much missing history about two of
America's most important industries, electricity and natural
gas."
-Joseph A. Pratt, NEH-Cullen Professor of
History and Business, University of Houston
"... a remarkable book on the political inner workings of the U.
S. energy industry."
-Robert Peltier, PE,
Editor-in-Chief, POWER Magazine
"This is a powerful story, brilliantly
told."
-Forrest McDonald, Historian
ROBERT L. BRADLEY JR., a 16-year Enron employee
and Ken Lay confidant, is a noted free-market scholar and
public-policy entrepreneur. The founder and CEO of the Institute for
Energy Research, Bradley is the author of numerous books and essays on
the history and political economy of energy. He is an adjunct scholar
of the Cato Institute in Washington, D. C.; a visiting fellow of the
Institute of Economic Affairs in London; and an honorary senior
research fellow at the Center for Energy Economics at the University
of Texas at Austin. In 2002, he received the Julian Simon Memorial
Award for his work on energy and sustainable development.
Bradley
lives in Houston and likes to spend time in the beautiful Texas Hill
Country.
