Profiteers - Bechtel and the Men Who Built the World

Zusatztext “In this compelling corporate history! she artfully detail show Bechtel accrued power by exploiting the “revolving door of capitalism!” through which its executives have glided effortlessly! moving between the company headquarters and the corridors of power in the nation’s capital.” – The National Book Review Informationen zum Autor Sally Denton is an investigative reporter, author, and historian who writes about the subjects others ignore—from a drug conspiracy in Kentucky to organized crime in Las Vegas; from corruption within the Mormon Church to the hidden history of Manifest Destiny; from one of America’s bitterest political campaigns to the powerful forces against Franklin D. Roosevelt. She has received the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Woodrow Wilson Public Scholar Fellowship, and the Black Mountain/Kluge Fellowship. She is the author of, among others, The Money and the Power , American Massacre , The Bluegrass Conspiracy, and The Profiteers: Bechtel and the Men Who Built the World . Klappentext The inside story of the Bechtel family and the empire they’ve controlled since the construction of the Hoover Dam.The Profiteers CHAPTER ONE Go West! A “ tall, beefy man with a bull-like roar,” Warren Augustine Bechtel, whose legacy would be one of the greatest engineering achievements in American history, came into the world on September 12, 1872. The fifth in a family of eight children, he was raised on a hardscrabble farm near Freeport, Illinois. His parents—Elizabeth Bentz and John Moyer Bechtel—were descendants of pioneer Pennsylvania German families. When he was twelve, his parents moved to Peabody, Kansas, where they eked out a living “ at a time when he saw many men missing an arm or a leg from service in the Civil War,” as one account described the setting. It was a backbreaking childhood that he fantasized about escaping from an early age. Because he was tasked with farm chores since he was a toddler, Warren’s schooling was confined to the winter months when the crops lay beneath frozen ground. Like many of his contemporaries, he hated farming as only a farmer’s son can, but he disliked the classroom with equal fervor. Still, his father, who was also a grocery store proprietor, insisted that he finish high school. In 1887 the first railroad came through the area, and during the summers, Warren hired himself out to the construction crews to learn grading and machinery. He also worked for neighboring ranchers, branding cattle and driving herds. But his passion was the slide trombone, which he practiced while roaming the land. He dreamed of playing the instrument professionally. Upon graduation at the age of nineteen, he hit the road with an ensemble of performers who called themselves the Ladies Band. He hoped music would spare him a future in farming. “ Either the music of the ladies’ band was very bad or the Western audiences were lacking in appreciation,” the New York Times would later describe the venture. “The troupe came to grief in Lewiston, Ill., and the young slide-trombonist was stranded.” Disheartened, he returned home to the unwelcome plow to raise corn for livestock feed. He remained there until 1897, when he became infatuated with a slender brunette named Clara Alice West. She was visiting relatives in nearby Peabody. After a fleeting courtship that alarmed her affluent Indiana parents, the two married, and Warren ventured into the cattle business. He embarked on his scheme to fatten Arizona draught steers as they awaited slaughter in the Kansas stockyards. But the bottom dropped out of both the corn and cattle markets to record lows at the end of the nineteenth century, leaving the newlyweds bankrupt. With their infant firs...

Product details

• Authors: Sally Denton
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 23.03.2017
• EAN: 9781476706474
• ISBN: 978-1-4767-0647-4
• No. of pages: 464
• Subject: Social sciences, law, business > Business > General, dictionaries