It is in many ways the culmination of years of research and effort to put together what an answer to a question that i have always wanted to ask. That was, who were the other guys and gals . Who were the other people who compromised the story of oil . A lot of times we know about johnny rockefeller, the richest man in the world. When he was alive and today, of all days for the release of the softcover of breaking rockefeller is important. Because i do not pick this day. But may 23 is the 80th anniversary of rockefellers death. So 80 years ago, John D Rockefeller, there was some historical symmetry there always good for some who lets really good stories about history. Interestingly enough, on the day that he died, rockefeller failed to achieve what was essentially the biggest goal in his life. Sure, it was to get rich. Sure it was to beat is very powerful oil but as he achieved his first both his new goal emerged. He truly wanted to live to be 100 years old. This was going to be the accomplishment of his life. When he died on may 23, 1937, he was two years, i counted. Two years, one month, 15 days shy of his 100th birthday. Sadly, rockefeller failed. But in the process he died a great philanthropist. It is interesting because on the very last day of his life, the very last things that rockefeller did was to pay off the mortgage of the euclid Avenue Baptist Church back in cleveland ohio. The place where he had his wrist very powerful religious experience and an experience that would not only define his life, define how he viewed himself and those around him but create one of the greatest armies of this man. That is that every sunday rockefeller would build out hymns from the pews and considered himself a very godly man. And yet he was ruthless. Those whom he went up against, he was utterly ruthless in destroying all competition and he created elaborate explanations in his own mind. For what his wealth was a sign of the blessing from god. Even though the people he destroyed viewed him as the darth vader of his age. As the true feeling of his time. And so, i want to tell a story about those upstarts and underdogs. Some who rockefeller crushed but ultimately those who found a way to beat rockefeller at his own game. And that essentially is the departure point for this story. A couple of points were raised already and it is fascinating to really understand the stakes of what these upstarts and underdogs were up against. So after he died on may 23, the New York Times went out and actually does off one of his old tax returns and try to answer the question, how rich was rockefeller truly . And it turns out that when you adjust for inflation, at those scales and time differentials, average inflation adjustment doesnt do it justice. One of the things i did was use some excellent scholarship from some of the economists in a company to how much would rockefeller have been worth at the peak of his power in todays money . Turns out, rockefeller was not a rich man. Rockefeller was an incredibly wealthy man. When you do the calculations it turns out he was worth 357 billion by todays calculations. By comparison the richest human being on the planet today, bill gates is worth around 80 billion. So compared to the blazing fire of rockefeller and bill gates has a smoldering amber. This was the accomplishment of his life. And in looking at how rockefeller systematically collected that wealth, in the process, not only took his company known as standard oil into becoming the largest refinery in the oil business. Standard wasnt even the Largest Oil Company in a sense in the oil business. Standard at the peak of his power was the oil business. And that is when the story begins and breaking rockefeller for that is the moment in 1889 when rockefeller is essentially the king of broadway. He has created a luxurious headquarters for himself on 26 broadly. You can still go there today and at the top of broadway, rockefeller ran one of the largest Oil Production refining and Distribution Companies in the world. Yet, there was a problem. And that is that rockefeller was a monopolist. And rockefeller systematically destroyed any other form of independent competition. At its peak standard oil controlled essentially 80 percent of all oil on the planet. If you think about that for a second in our own day and age, yes, things are different now. But think about one company that controls 80 percent of all the oil on planet earth. That was John D Rockefeller. It also gives you an idea about the stakes of those that went up against him. In 1889 the story begins, the world is making his transition from cultural oil. The individuals who would help push that transition along with help make the world that we enjoy and live in today had a problem. Rockefeller was their problem. And from that problem is of the outbreak of what is essentially the worlds first great oil war. And from that where we have a lot of important things. First will that were transformed rockefeller from being that rich man into the wealthiest human being who has ever lived. That were created the Global Energy market as we know it. Because it created a global price for oil. Today, the price of a barrel of oil is the same in shanghai essentially as it is in london as it is in moscow. There is a reason for that. The reason is the war to break rockefellers empire it helps create this global price for oil. And give us a lot of legacies. Legacies of science, innovation and legacies of government regulations that we still live with today. I wanted to tell this story because i wanted to show those enduring links between oils past and all present. And so the stakes for the and more importantly, the lives and of individuals who helped make that possible. So, who were these essential figures . Start digging into it and turns out there are some rather colorful characters the first one in the center of the story is a fellow named Marcus Samuel junior. Marcus samuel was not oil man Marcus Samuel was in a sense, and east london merchant trader. He did not know much about the oil business but he knew the east asian import export business. His Early Arrival in the oil industry as the story unfolds was a take no prisoners Oil Executive named he also had a problem in a sense because he had essentially inherited a company from his mentor so abruptly died and left him as the interim director of a company known as royal dutch. Samuels company would eventually become known as shell. And this initially defined the early part of the relationship. They were essentially friendly in the modern sense because they were enemies who also that along and nothing of the day, we were enemies. And rockefeller was benefiting from this rivalry. Rockefeller was taking advantage of the fact that instead of fighting him, the main source of competition of standard oil spent all of its time fighting each other. Mainly across vast ports of the far east and asia. And so, as i am unpacking the story through my research, i certainly hit on a interesting idea. That defines a narrative in the story structure for how i tell this history of the war to break rockefellers empire. The idea was this. In almost every single previous historical treatment of this fight against rockefeller, take no prisoners Oil Executive always gets top billing. Marcus samuel is also always at the bottom of the marquee. The reason is quite simple. In the end, defeated marcus in a sense in their commercial competition with each other. And that defeat is resulted in the combination of two powerful companies known today as royal dutch and shell. Read or the shell oil group. And i said why not tell this story upside down . Why not look at how it from the perspective of horatio . Why not tell the story of don quixote . But in this case, look at panza as a true hero of the story. As a start looking at this in essence, marcus was the true hero of the story. Because in order to be rockefeller, in order to outflank the most powerful oil monopoly of his time, marcus had to unravel a complicated fivepart puzzle of distance, geography, risk, technology and greed. And in doing so he did a lot of amazing things. Such as kickstart the innovation that would lead to the modern oil tanker. Developments and breakthroughs that are still used today in todays oil tankers. Finding a way to finally open up the recently were most recently inaugurated suez canal. Shipments would still transit the canal today but it was not so Marcus Samuel found a way to make it happen that the oil world changed permanently. That the balance of energy power on planet earth was fundamentally shifted thanks to marcus. Emma start unpacking all of these things and i think to myself, this is a story that has to be told. There is a story that really has to be told and along the way there is not just Marcus Samuel and put a whole cast of characters. Many of them forgotten. People who are forgotten to history, heroes that made their contributions. Contributions we all enjoy today and yet we dont know about it. There were amazing figures such as the spectacle of italian geologist named who is essentially reinventing petroleum geography one shovel scoop at a time and the wiles of sumatra. Then there was that one id profit of oil in spindle top texas. Higgins could not have been more wrong about absolutely everything he ever touched and yet, thanks to pattillos failure, we have the kickstart of the texas oil boom. An event that we in defines a state of texas as we know it frankly, American Power as we know it. We also have amazing trailblazing female, and amazing trailblazing female journalist. Such as ida tarbell. A woman who rockefeller destroyed. He broke it is mother both financially and frankly, psychologically. Certainly emotionally over the course of his attempt as an independent oil man in pennsylvania. Rockefeller broke it father. And she was only an adolescent at the time so ida did anything that the other woman would have done at the time and that was to get out. In order to get out, ida had to get an education. So she became the very first woman in her graduating class of Allegheny College to graduate from college. She traveled across the atlantic, studied and eventually met a fellow with a godless mustache, a taste for floppy bowties and he had just created this new magazine that he was very humbly going to name it after himself. His name was sam mcclure and he was, and started mcclures magazine. It was the parent of mcclures magazine and idas Meticulous Research information in many ways to essentially effect her final revenge against the man who destroyed her father, John D Rockefeller. And so in telling that story i actually get to the heart of the real problem that we face in todays day and age. A problem that defines our current policy debate. And it is a reason in traveling the country and talking with folks from the atlantic to the pacific. Especially around the oil industry. The revitalized oil industry of the United States. And it is this. There is a question and it is an unsolved question in the american politics and a question that breaking rockefeller ways into. That is, do you need just the force to protect you against monopolists . Is a Supreme Court in the federal government alone enough to protect us . I argue in breaking rockefeller that the answer to that question is no. That you actually have to have both the shield of federal regulation represented by the courts and the sort of competition you actually have to have both competition and protective regulations in order to protect consumers from companies that would otherwise just take advantage of them. This is actually an unsettled question right now. And it is one which i think we can learn from. In tying a connection between oil, past and present. And along the way you get a fantastic riproaring good story in breaking rockefeller. I think that is perhaps the best part of writing the book. Going back and systematically recreating some of the most often banished places that Marcus Samuel and John D Rockefeller would have known. But today they are completely gone. So in the story for example, in showing how the world made that important transition from coal oil, breaking rockefeller actually recreates an original journey on the Orient Express. Leaving from paris and traveling east. Because at the time, that was the fastest way gets the oil fields in russia. I even found an actual menu that was used on the outbound journey from paris. And got to follow stepbystep station by station mainly through the diaries of americans had just come back from a ride on the Orient Express and talked about the horrendous experience that it was. Because at the time, this was not the gas and electric Orient Express. It was burning fuel oil and excess liquid fuel oil allowed for more powerful engines. Greater horsepower, heavier training carriages. More luxuries. But at the time, the cold burning Orient Express was something of a rinkydink affair. It was still a varies by the standards of today if you were european, if you are american, it was actually something of a disappointing experience. So it is showing how the world was before oil. You would actually explore the experiences of these people. Traveling through the jungles of sumatra and actually following the track of the trailblazing geologists who for the very first time, managed to take the ideas of science and make them practical for oilmen who were actually, they did not care about science. They just wanted to know okay wise guys, how do i use your science to find the next big usher or flowing well . Turns on the up until the jungles of sumatra, no one had been able to use science to say, this is where you will find the next major oil discovery. This is where the next major gusher will be. Not until the spectacle of italian and his german colleague. Actually undertook to do just that. They actually achieve something great. To this day, the language of geology and science permeates the oil industry. It is thanks to the trail blazers and these unknown figures that we actually enjoy the benefits of hydrocarbons today. Finally there was the far east. Now, the oil will come on chinas insatiable desire for energy. And in answering that, in quenching that desire today just as back in Marcus Samuels time, great fortunes can be made. Or lost. And so as i am telling this story i am starting to uncover a lot of these connections. And for me that is the most important art of breaking rockefeller. Because i love history. I love a great story. I love a great narrative driven story that features real people against somewhat daunting but real stakes. You have to gamble big. Sometimes they fail, sometimes they succeed. That is why i want to read books. I would like to find that book. And in writing breaking rockefeller i wanted to write the kind of what i always wanted to read. But history is all well and good. Unless we can learn from it, it is just a good story. So the final part of this story and this conversation is about how do we learn from it . And in doing so, i thought i might do Something Special for the audience. Not only folks i got here early but the folks who are crammed in the back here. I encourage you to come sit down after so we can do q a. In doing this i would stop and talk about the controversy, heresies and the legacies of breaking rockefeller. Things that have emerged in conversations with folks around the country. As i have been discussing this book. First the controversies. 11 people have said and i think it is a good point, breaking rockefeller isnt, youre not really talking about breaking the man. In fact, rockefeller did great. The breakup of his oil empire, thanks to the Supreme Court decision in 1911 was a bountiful shockwave. It was in breaking up this giant monolith into smaller pieces. Each one rockefeller became the majority owner of. Once the companies were listed on the new york stock exchange, the wealth of rockefeller proliferated. Wasnt breaking rockefeller actually a good thing . The answer is, short in some sense. The story is not about breaking rockefeller the man. The story is about breaking everything that he stood for. Because in business, rockefeller always won. Even if he had to cheat. That is not good business, that is not fair play. And in dealing from the bottom of the deck, rockefeller created a monopoly that was a predator. A monopoly that preyed upon average people. That is bad. And so breaking rockefeller, the idea, breaking standard oil and breaking a company that views its customers as prey is actually something that i stand by. And i am encouraged by the fact that these upstarts and underdogs managed to accomplish just that. Some heresies as we have heard about. This idea that the federal government is enough. All you need is a studious legal code and a dedicated bureaucrat and that is really all you need in order to defend customers. From predatory practices. Perhaps, but really what you need is both. You have to have at the end of the day, it doesnt matter how good your regulations are. It doesnt matter how dedicated your bureaucrats are. Someone has to wade into the marketplace and offer a commercial alternative for there is no true competition. Washington d. C. Cannot sign a memo and say quick, we need competition, make it happen someone has to take the financial risk. Someone has to risk failure in order to create true competition. As we know, even after the Supreme Court broke apart rockefellers empire, parts of it still work colluding with each other. The shadow or the practices of rockefellers corporate culture, this monopolistic idea never really was burned away. As one oligarch said after the breaking up of standard oil, how on earth is someone going to force someone else to compete against themselves . It is really hard to do. Someone is has to come in. So i would say that breaking rockefeller the book puts an idea in our own idea which is yes, you have to have competition. Competition is good. In many ways this is an ode to competition. Im very part of the reactions and debates that it has inspired. I think the