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    The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes
    The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes
    The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes
    Audiobook22 hours

    The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes

    Written by Bryan Burrough

    Narrated by James Jenner

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Phenomenal reviews and sales greeted the hardcover publication of The Big Rich, New York Times bestselling author Bryan Burrough's spellbinding chronicle of Texas oil. Weaving together the multigenerational sagas of the industry's four wealthiest families, Burrough brings to life the men known in their day as the Big Four: Roy Cullen, H. L. Hunt, Clint Murchison, and Sid Richardson, all swaggering Texas oil tycoons who owned sprawling ranches and mingled with presidents and Hollywood stars. Seamlessly charting their collective rise and fall, The Big Rich is a hugely entertaining account that only a writer with Burrough's abilities-and Texas upbringing-could have written.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateApr 10, 2009
    ISBN9781440708473
    The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes
    Author

    Bryan Burrough

    Bryan Burrough is a special correspondent at Vanity Fair and the author of five books.

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    Reviews for The Big Rich

    4.5/5

    12 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

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    • 4/5
      The great account of how the greatest state, Texas, became the birth place of many oil and financial powerbrokers. The book chronicles the rise and lives of four of the biggest wildcaters to emerge from the early 1900s oil boom. Their rise and charades are detailed in this sprawling book that encompasses not only the Big Rich but their descendants' escapades. The political stories in the book's middle were long-winded, but it wouldn't be a Texas book without a fully encompassed story of reach and power touching every corner of the country.
    • 5/5
      Really great, super-comprehensive history of a few of the godfathers of Texas Oil/the ornery men who launched it all. As I was reading (listening), was thinking about the mountains of research required to put all this together - big wow!

      For me, I might have enjoyed the visual read from a real book/e-book as I would have done some post-it tabs and flipping back and forth, but thanks to the audio book format, I finished 2 loads of dishes, 10 loads of laundry and walked the dog two miles while I "ear-read" over a couple days so that's pretty hard to beat (especially because I didn't mind the housework half as much since I was in Texas spending a ton of money on minks, art, and private jets the whole time).

      This is absolutely zero reflection on the author, but I enjoyed the book so much more when the wildcatters were exploring for oil and finding oil and almost going broke and then being rich a day later, as opposed to when they accrued a lot of money and turned into complete and total effing asshats.

      At the same time, I realize if this book were written 25 years earlier, odds are good that we wouldn't have gotten the real story about how incredibly racist some of them were, or how scarily deluded some of them were, which is to say that I absolutely needed to be disappointed by the characters before it was all said and done. I appreciate getting the whole story.

      In fact, I feel like there's a whole 'nother book waiting to be written about their incredible influence in politics. And I would be more than delighted to read another Brian Burroughs book about that, as I have enjoyed his writing in mainstream journalism for several years.

      Another review I saw took issue with the transgendered bovine situation. :-) The author is so smart about other issues that I can't believe he would make an error about a bull that turned into a heifer before the end of the sentence, so I will attribute it to an editor or performer who made their own little change, not realizing they were going to get the author reamed by his adopted home state and certainly not realizing it would require the entire cattle industry to get woke about when bulls don't feel so bullish.

      Overall, great read, absolutely recommend if you're interested in Texas history, if you're interested in history of the oil business, or even if you're interested in the politics of the 60, 70s, and 80s, because there were a lot of winds blowing into Washington from Texas back then (and still, but more of a Texas tornado back then).

      Great read - read it today!