The Taking of Getty Oil: The Full Story of the Most Spectacular and Catastrophic Takeover of all Time - Hardcover

Steve Coll is a staff writer at the New Yorker, the dean of the Columbia Journalism School, and the bestselling author of seven books. Previously he served as president of the New America Foundation and worked for two decades at the Washington Post, where he won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism for a four-part series on the Securities and Exchange Commission during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. The award-winning series became the basis for Eagle on the Street (1991), coauthored with David A. Vise. Coll’s other books include New York Times Notable Book The Deal of the Century (1998); Ghost Wars (2004), winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction; The Bin Ladens (2009), winner of the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction; and Private Empire (2012), winner of the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award.
 

The financial disarray in which J. Paul Getty's death in 1976 left his family and the Getty Oil Company has led to sibling contention, corporate intrigue, courtroom high drama and, most recently, to an unprecedented $11-billion damage judgment over the Texaco-Pennzoil acquisition. Using "reconstructed dialogue" and suspenseful narrative, Washington Post financial writer Coll spins the story of family trustee Gordon Getty who sows confusion; a beset Getty Oil management; Texas oil-patch "good ole boy" Hugh Liedtke of Pennzoil fulfilling his dream to buyout Getty, only to be outmaneuvered by Texaco's Wall Street merger-brokersbut eventually winning in a down-home jury trial the biggest civil monetary damage award ever. Coll's behind-the-scenes account of investment banking and legal high jinks is at times startling and always intriguing. Major ad/promo; first serial to the Los Angeles Times Magazine.
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