Edison to Enron (PDF)

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