Synopses & Reviews
Long before the rise of mega-corporations like Wal-Mart and Microsoft, Standard Oil controlled the oil industry with a monopolistic force unprecedented in American business history. Undaunted by the ruthless power of its owner, John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937), a fearless and ambitious reporter named Ida Minerva Tarbell (1857-1944) confronted the company known simply as "The Trust." Through her peerless fact gathering and devastating prose, Tarbell, a muckraking reporter at McClure's magazine, pioneered the new practice of investigative journalism. Her shocking discoveries about Standard Oil and Rockefeller led, inexorably, to a dramatic confrontation during the opening decade of the twentieth century that culminated in the landmark 1911 Supreme Court antitrust decision breaking up the monopolies and forever altering the landscape of modern American industry. Based on extensive research in the Tarbell and Rockefeller archives, Taking on the Trust is a vivid and dramatic history of the Progressive Era with powerful resonance for the first decades of the twenty-first century.
Synopsis
Hailed by critics on its release, this fascinating dual biography looks at two extraordinary lives and the social history of the Progressive Era.
Taking on the Trustis a grand achievement by a skilled scholar and proud defender of the ever-necessary act of political journalism.
Synopsis
'A demonstration that . . . the power of the press to expose corruption was not to be ignored."Paul E. Steiger, Wall Street Journal
Synopsis
How a female investigative journalist brought down the world's greatest tycoon and broke up the Standard Oil monopoly.
About the Author
The author of six books, Steve Weinberghas been a longtime board member of the National Book Critics Circle and currently teaches investigative journalism at the University of Missouri Journalism School. He lives in Columbia, Missouri.