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

by Bryan Burrough

In The Big Rich, bestselling author and Vanity Fair special correspondent Bryan Burrough chronicles the rise and fall of one of the great economic and political powerhouses of the twentieth century—Texas oil. By weaving together the epic sagas of the industry’s four greatest fortunes, Burrough has produced an enthralling tale of money, family, and power in the American century.

Known in their day as the Big Four, Roy Cullen, H. L. Hunt, Clint Murchison, and Sid Richardson were all from modest backgrounds, and all became patriarchs of the wealthiest oil families in Texas. As a class they came to be known as the Big Rich, and together they created a new legend in America—the swaggering Texas oilman who owns private islands, sprawling ranches and perhaps a football team or two, and mingles with presidents and Hollywood stars.

The truth more than lives up to the myth. Along with their peers, the Big Four shifted wealth and power in America away from the East Coast, sending three of their state’s native sons to the White House and largely bankrolling the rise of modern conservatism in America. H. L. Hunt became America’s richest man by grabbing Texas’s largest oilfield out from under the nose of the man who found it; he was also a lifelong bigamist. Clint Murchison entertained British royalty on his Mexican hacienda and bet on racehorses—and conducted dirty deals—with J. Edgar Hoover. Roy Cullen, an elementary school dropout, used his millions to revive the hapless Texas GOP. And Sid Richardson, the Big Four’s fun-loving bachelor, was a friend of several presidents, including, most fatefully, Lyndon Johnson.

The Big Four produced offspring who frequently made more headlines, and in some cases more millions, than they did. With few exceptions, however, their fortunes came to an end in a swirl of bitter family feuds, scandals, and bankruptcies, and by the late 1980s, the era of the Big Rich was over. But as Texas native Bryan Burrough reveals in this hugely entertaining account, the profound economic, political, and cultural influence of Texas oil is still keenly felt today.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Business, Biography, American History, Audiobook, Politics

466 pages, Hardcover

First published January 27, 2009

About the author

Bryan Burrough joined Vanity Fair in August 1992 and has been a special correspondent for the magazine since January 1995. He has reported on a wide range of topics, including the events that led to the war in Iraq, the disappearance of Natalee Holloway, and the Anthony Pellicano case. His profile subjects have included Sumner Redstone, Larry Ellison, Mike Ovitz, and Ivan Boesky.

Prior to joining Vanity Fair, Burrough was an investigative reporter at The Wall Street Journal. In 1990, with Journal colleague John Heylar, he co-authored Barbarians at the Gate (HarperCollins), which was No. 1 on the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list for 39 weeks. Burrough's oth­er books include Vendetta: American Express and the Smearing of Edmund Safra (HarperCollins, 1992), Dragonfly: NASA and the Crisis Aboard Mir (HarperCollins, 1998); and Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933–34 (Penguin Press, 2004).

Burrough is a three-time winner of the John Hancock Award for excellence in financial journalism. He lives in Summit, New Jersey with his wife Marla and their two sons.

Reviews

[Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve been on a Texas binge lately. I’ve always found the state, its history, and its people to be intriguing. And the politicians? Is there a state that can compare with Texas when one begins to list the people who have served as governor of that state? Well, maybe next-door neighbor Louisiana comes close.

I read one time (and I would give credit to the source, but I don’t remember who wrote it) that, paraphrasing now, Louisiana governors had three primary responsibilities. Listed in the order of their importance they are: 1).to entertain; 2). to govern; and 3). to stay out of jail. (Piyush “Bobby” Jindal seems to have missed the memo. He only seems interested in number 2.) But, I digress.

Texas governors include the likes of Sam Houston and “Pa” Ferguson and “Ma” Ferguson and “Pappy” O’Daniel and John Connally, and Ann Richards, and George W. Bush and Rick Perry. Top that, Louisiana.

And of course, there is the giant that overshadows them all: Lyndon Baines Johnson. Never a governor, nevertheless he is one of only four people to serve in all four elected federal offices: Representative, Senator, Vice-President and President. LBJ’s impact on American politics has been so great that it has taken Robert Caro five volumes to write his biography.

And that’s where I began my recent Texas marathon, by re-reading Caro’s first two volumes (if I live long enough I plan to read the other three) as well as "Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream," written by young Doris Kearns, before Goodwin was added to her name.

Next came the Texas novels written by Billy Lee Brammer and Edwin “Bud” Shrake, especially Shrake, and a great study of those two writers and four of their fellow Texans in Steven L. Davis’s "Texas Literary Outlaws."

And I recently finished "The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes."

Shrake’s "Strange Peaches" is a novel set in Dallas just before and just after the assassination of JFK. When I read his descriptions of almost continuous parties, elaborate pranks and other excesses all fueled by booze, pot, and hard drugs, I thought that Shrake was probably guilty of employing his novelist’s license to embellish in order to punch up the story. Wrong, again. After reading "Texas Literary Outlaws" and "The Big Rich" I now know that practically everything he described actually occurred.

I just read Shrake’s "But Not For Love: A Novel About Men, Women and Money." Well after all, it is about Texas. I am currently reading Phillipp Meyer's multi-generational Texas epic, "The Son." Furthermore, Minutaglio and Smith's autobiography of Molly Ivins is in the hopper.

"The Big Rich" is a recounting of the life and times of four Texas oil wildcatters -- Hugh Roy Cullen, Sid Richardson, Clint Murchison and H.L. Hunt. Burrough writes, “If Texas Oil had a Mount Rushmore, their faces would adorn it. A good ol’ boy. A scold. A genius. A bigamist. Known in their heyday as the Big Four, they became the founders of the greatest Texas family fortunes, headstrong adventurers who rose from nowhere to take turns being acclaimed America’s wealthiest man.”

Hugh Roy Cullen, later a Houston wildcatter, grew up poor in San Antonio, and dropped out of school in the fifth grade. After becoming a wealthy man, he would become an early champion of and contributor to ultraconservative causes.

He was “stern, humorless, and a bit of a scold…a man who detested communists, pinkos,” and especially Roosevelt “and whose favored politician was the red-busting Joe McCarthy.”

Sid Richardson and Clint Murchison were lifelong friends from Athens, sixty miles southeast of Dallas. According to Burrough, “[d]espite their common backgrounds, they were a mismatched pair. Murchison was energetic, impatient, independent, and like many country boys before him, intellectually insecure….Murchison was shy and would remain so all his life. If he didn’t absolutely have to talk to someone, he avoided it.

“In sharp contrast, Richardson presented himself as the essence of the Texas good ol’ boy, joshing, laughing, and cursing in a thick backwoods accent.”

As outrageous as the conduct of these three, and their progeny, could be at times, neither they, nor their progeny, could hold a candle to H.L. Hunt or his progeny.

Burrough writes, “At a time when itinerant wildcatters like Sid Richardson couldn’t find time for a wife let alone a family, Hunt would build three, two in secret. If they made a movie of his life, no one would believe it was true.”

The only non-native in the group, Hunt was born in southern Illinois, about seventy miles south of St. Louis. “He was a strange man, a loner who lived deep inside his own peculiar mind, a self-educated thinker who was convinced – absolutely convinced – that he was possessed of talents that bordered on the superhuman. He may have been right; in the annals of American commerce there has never been anyone quite like Haroldson Lafayette Hunt.”

The subtitle of the book, "The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes," is appropriate. The “Rise” was accomplished by the Big Four; the “Fall” was engineered by the progeny, particularly that of Murchison and, especially, Hunt. The fall is a story of family feuds, lawsuits, scandals and bankruptcies – and it isn’t pretty.

I do recommend the book even though it is marred by inexcusable typos and misspellings (“Edmund” Murrow being only one example) and unexplainable factual errors. The typos and misspellings could have and should have been corrected by a proofreader and Burrough and his editor certainly should have avoided the obvious factual errors.

How could he have possibly written the following: “… the champion steer, an eight-hundred pound heifer…?” Huh? Shouldn’t Burrough have known that a steer is a castrated male and a heifer is a young female? How could a Texan be so confused about bovine gender? And shouldn’t he, a Texan, have known that "The Longhorns," written by J. Frank Dobie, the prominent University of Texas professor and folklorist, was not a novel, but a work of nonfiction?

But here is the most egregious error of all:

“McCarthy’s subsequent ascension to Martin Dies’s old chairmanship of the House Un-American Activities Committee, and HUAC’s ensuing crusade against communist ‘infiltrators,’ transformed the senator into a polarizing figure across the country.”

Holy separation of powers! A senator chaired a committee in the House of Representatives?

I still recommend the book even though it is impossible to overlook the errors. They might have been understandable if the book had been published by some vanity press, but it wasn’t. We should be able to expect better from The Penguin Press.

Bryan Burrough earlier co-wrote a big best-seller titled "Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco" and was the sole author of "Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-1934." The description on the Big Rich book jacket erroneously (imagine that) describes him as a native Texan. His family moved to Texas when he was seven-years old, but he was born in Tennessee. In his introduction, he mentions that some of his young classmates referred to him as a carpetbagger.

[Tony Daniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a fun tour. It's particularly strong on the early years of H.L. Hunt, Roy Murchison and Sid Richardson (the Bass family founder). The book loses its way a bit with the big detour through the Glenn McCarthy story (which deserves its own book). The main problem with the book is Burrough's strident liberal political correctness. It's "ultra-conservative" this and "ultra-conservative" that over and over again. Burroughs can't fathom why any of these people, whom he otherwise admires, might not be political liberals, and he gives one ludicrous sociological explanation after another to account for it. The answer, of course, is that all of these folks were men and women of their times and were very much in the mainstream of their era. There is also the possibility that people like H.L Hunt, who were right about quite a few things where others were not, might possibly have been right about most of their political views, as well. That America MIGHT owe them a debt of gratitude. Burroughs thinks such an idea ludicrous. The men were political laughingstocks, he says over and over again. But if you can make it through the cloying apologies to his political masters (his editor and the reviewers, one supposes), the remainder of the book is a wonderful romp through a fascinating epoch of American history. And there are quite a few ecstatic, sordid, weird and wild moments along the way, from H.L. Hunt's THREE families (he was nearly a TRI-gamist!) to the great moments of long-delayed validation for the oilman's oilman, Sid Richardson. The book wanders thematically a bit through the stories of the second and third generations, but there are some good tales there as well, and we find out what ultimately happened to all those oil fortunes and what the descendants did with what was one of the biggest piles of loot in human history. Ultimately, I recommend this. Burroughs tells a good, long story well.

[Alexw · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating book about the BIG OIL BARONS. One of them took all his oil money and bought the Dallas Cowboys and bedded everyone of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders. Now that is what I call leading the league in my kind of scoring-ROFLMASO !!

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

When KC won the Superbowl and I saw pictures of Clark Hunt, it reminded me of when the Hunt brothers tried to corner the silver market back in the early 1980s. I found this book at the library and it is really an interesting read of the 4 oil families of Texas.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This enjoyable book, a gift from the Long-Suffering Wife, is full of stuff I didn’t know. These things are more important to me now that I am living in Texas.

I remember that Frank McCourt once wrote a stage show called “The Irish … and How They Got That Way.” This book might be called “Texans … and How They Got That Way.”

I don’t have many big thoughts about this book, just a bunch of unconnected little thoughts.

The writing is mostly excellent throughout the 440 pages of the book, but there are some distracting moments when I feel the book could have had tighter editing. Here’s an example. On paperback page 374, a sub-chapter begins like this:

The passing of H. L. Hunt, like that of the Soviet Union or Tito’s Yugoslavia, unleashed years of pent-up frustrations among the thirteen children of his three families. It didn’t happen overnight, in large part because…

Of course, the meaning of this sentence is perfectly clear to any reader with good will and a charitable spirit, but still, this sentence -- as it stands now in the book -- says that the Soviet Union and Tito’s Yugoslavia, like H. L. Hunt, had thirteen children.

This sentence could have been fixed in any number of ways. Here’s one possibility:

The passing of H. L. Hunt, like that of the Soviet Union or Tito’s Yugoslavia, unleashed years of pent-up frustrations. The thirteen children of his three families didn’t start brawling overnight, in large part because…

I’d like to make one more little fussy nitpick. The following appears on page 389, while describing the attempts of the Hunt brothers to corner the silver market:

But what was truly jaw-dropping about the Hunts’ purchases -- what stultified investigators when the truth eventually came out -- was that … [italics mine]

“Stultified” is simply the wrong word -- no dictionary that I consulted defined the word in such a way that it could be considered appropriate here. Maybe the writer meant to say some more ordinary word like “astonished” or “staggered”.

Still, that’s only two little nitpicks in 440 pages. Writing a flawless book is hard.

New topic. Sometimes people of right-wing opinion read books by people of left-wing opinion. This is admirable behavior (NOT sarcasm), and thoughtful people of left-wing opinion could learn from the example. However, when these people of right-wing opinion review books written by those of left-wing opinion here on Goodreads, and they cannot take issue with the facts that appear in the narrative, people of right-wing opinion tend to get their shorts in a bunch about word choice, claiming that the author’s plainly descriptive words are not appropriate for the situation. I noticed, for example, that in the critical reviews for Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns -- written by those who are less sympathetic to the plight of African-Americans than many -- reviewers felt that the word “caste” and the phrase “Jim Crow” appeared too frequently, an accusation that I then believed (and still believe now) to be absurd, given that the book’s subject is the great migration of African-Americans from the south to the north.

In the case of this book, those here on Goodreads who are unsympathetic to the author’s critical eye on the Texas oil moguls of the 20th century accuse the author of overusing the word “ultra-conservative”, because of the author’s “strident political correctness”.

One reviewer also says the book is marred by “cloying apologies to his political masters (his editor and the reviewers, one supposes)”. I read the whole book, word for word, and did not see a single apology, cloying or otherwise, even when the author falsely accuses Tito’s Yugoslavia of fathering 13 children.

Sorry, off topic. What I mean to say is that Texas oil moguls were often ultra-conservative by any reasonable definition of the term. As is the case with their present-day analogs, they believed in preposterous conspiracy theories that frequently involve our personal bodily fluids (vaccines today, fluoridation of water then), and believe that measures to remedy the negative effects of their often self-enriching activities are tyranny-driven examples of government overreach, to name only a few of their common qualities.

Texas oil moguls had -- admittedly -- the talent to find, extract, and get to market a revolutionary commodity that propelled their native land and its allies to a position of world dominance. But to believe that this narrow talent gives them -- or moguls of our own day -- any special insight into other areas of activity is, simply, ridiculous, sort of like believing that politicians have a better grasp on epidemiology than people who have dedicated their lives to studying it. That type of weak-brained thinking is what led to the downfall of the members of the Big Rich. As one reviewer said, “... each had a weakness for believing that, just because he was brilliant in one way, he was brilliant in all ways …”

[Sebastian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the story of Texas oil: famous wells that launched it all like Spindletop and Santa Rita #1 (which unlocked the Permian Basin); the "Big Four" oilmen - Cullen, Hunt, Murchison, and Richardson - who came to represent the state and its culture and its growing wealth; the afterlives of those men as they branched in to politics and the rise of Lyndon Johnson; their fall from grace from associating too closely with McCarthy. I didn't at all appreciate that Texas was a poor backwater until the 30s, and that only when real wealth began accumulating in Dallas and Houston in the 50s did Texas become an important economic force in the United States. I also didn't appreciate how important Texas oil was to the Allies' victory in WW2. Go to Oklahoma today and people will still tell you how oilmen won us the war.

My favorite part of the book, though, is when the Big Four are raising their second generation. Most of the second generation of Texas oil barons end up in New Haven (and some times Andover too). They come back to East Texas and West Texas and Oklahoma and Lousiana with Yale degrees, and bring some of their friends too.

The most successful among this second generation was Perry Bass, nephew of Sid Richardson. Perry and his children (Sid, Robert, etc) would go on to compound Richardson's fortune many times over. In their generosity, the Bass family donated two of the buildings I spent the most time at as a student at Yale: the Nancy Lee & Perry R. Bass Center for Molecular & Structural Biology (home of my beloved Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry department) and the Anne T. & Robert M. Bass Library. All Texas oil money.

I wonder if in the fullness of time students will discover the history of these benefactors, and demand we scrub their names from the buildings. There's no way around it: the dollars that gave MB&B a home and undergaduates a place to be seen / study in between classes all got their start as sweet black crude pumped out of the earth in East Texas.

[Heather M L · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, entertaining, but the authors apparent disdain for the Big Rich is at times to apparent. I tend to appreciate more unbiased approaches when reading books like his. For all his trying Burrough doesn't have the same fluidity to his chronicle as Cornelius Ryan in The Longest Day which makes epic stories that cross generations such as these accessible and readable. Overall, a good history of a sad turn of events in Texas oil history.

[Karla Rust · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was quite an interesting history of Texas oil fortunes and the families. Much takes place in 20s-30s-40s, and was a good history of how the oil industry got involved in national politics. Highly recommended!

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is it any wonder Texas oilmen inspired soap operas like "Dallas" and "Giant?" Here's a cursory list of their goings-on:

>Drinkin'
>Gamblin'
>Whorin';
>Bigamy;
>Old-fashioned Jew-hatin';
>Commie-huntin';
>Jesus-findin';
>Coke-snortin';
>Sidewalk sleepin';
>Market-cornerin';
>Right-wingin';
>Island-buyin';
>$290,000 in silver dollars;
>Wrestling matches at the symphony;
>Armed robbery;
>Billion dollar debts;
>One lobotomy;
>Hazard pay just for working in Texas humidity;
>Founding the AFC and the Dallas Cowboys;
>At least one crooked Italian count;
>Corruption;
>Leasing the same land to 11 people simultaneously;

. . . and, finally, a couple of murders, but those were just tangential.

"The Big Rich" mostly follows the "Big Four" oilmen: Roy Cullen, H.L. Hunt, Sid Richardson, and Clint Murchison. The list of supporting characters reads like an atlas of Houston and Dallas, including:

>MD Anderson;
>John Henry Kirby;
>John Connally;
>Brown & Root;
>Lyndon Johnson;
>Jesse H. Jones;
>George Strake;
>Sam Rayburn;
>Sid Bass;
>Lloyd Bentsen;
>both George Bushes;
>Glen McCarthy;
>Eugene McCarthy;
>various Roosevelts;
>Blaffer;
>and dozens more.

My five-star rating is really just for Houstonians and Dallasites. Civilian readers may wish that fewer historic personages had been named, so that the important ones would stand out more. Yet watching all these street signs and hospitals and art galleries come to life makes me think I know why Homer included too damn many characters in "The Iliad:" everyone wants to hear about their ancestors.

Throughout it all, author Bryan Burrough ("Public Enemies") quietly has the attitude shared by many Texans, and Houstonians in particular: yes, this city is a humid, mosquito-ridden swamp, overrun with cockroaches, congestion, and libertarians, but its OUR humid, mosquito-ridden swamp, and YOU don't get to talk shit about it.

At the end, after cataloging decades of ambition and foolishness, he feels wistful about the days of these larger-than-life figures.

[Raymond · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this a really interesting telling of the oil fortunes and misfortunes in Texas; however, I would have liked to be provided with some information on the steam (boiler) engines that were used in the drilling! Burrough often tells of the hazards that the boilers were when the gushers came in, but does not detail at all the use of the boilers.
My family enjoyed a stay in the Shamrock Hilton when we moved to that area in 1973, it had an amazing pool! Also, as a software representative for IBM in Fort Worth I often saw T. Cullen Davis at his office in the Kendavis Industries Mid-Continent Supply Company.
The Sinclair oil company is mentioned a couple of times but there is no mention of Harry F. Sinclair and his office in downtown Fort Worth? Also missing is Harrell Edmonds "Eddie" Chiles who was the founder of Western Company of North America and an owner of the Texas Rangers who advised Texans on TV that if you don't own an oil well - then you should get one!

[Kristi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting on the history of oil in Texas. The first part of the book was fascinating: how oil was found using various combinations of money, luck, intelligence, and chutzpah. It's kind of technical, but Burroughs explains this key part of 20th c. Texas history in an engaging & clear way.

The stories of the families of the "big rich" were ok -- it was interesting to find out more about names I've heard of my whole life (as a Texan), but too sensationalistic for my taste.

I almost gave this book 2 stars b/c it was annoying to me how often he characterized some of the oil-rich Texans as "ultra-conservative/conservative" and "racist" without any sense that these don't necessarily belong together . . . the author has an illiberal liberal perspective that makes both of those terms pejorative. Racist, yes . . . conservative, no. In the politics of the big rich, Burroughs paints with a broad brush and produces a caricature.

[Cynthia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intriguing stories about the men (unfortunately mainly men) that I grew up hearing about in Texas. These are the backgrounds of the men who made Texas famous for oil and big money. Really enjoyed the gossipy but true life adventures. Sadly,many of these families have devolved into the right-wing politicians and now have brought shame onto Texas. (Actually they were doing this for decades but not as openly.) Very detailed and researched. Now I know who owned some of those houses I used to walk my dogs by while living in Dallas. I know this sounds shallow but I would have liked a few more photos of people and events.

[Michael Linton · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book had great stories but the book as a whole was hard to finish. It felt very disjointed and the flow was horrible. It felt like it was various stories (in great detail) that had no arch. Also, the book dove into stories of people that wasn't part of the Big Four. I would have preferred it so much more if it was presented as a collection of stories.

[Frank Stein · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bryan Burrough is an indefatigable researcher with an eye for a good story. The problem is he finds so many good stories, and some not-so-good ones, that he can't sort the gold from the dross.

At the heart of this book, and at the best parts of it, are four oil fortunes, started by Roy Cullen, the HL Hunt, Sid Richardson (and his nephew Perry Bass), and Clint Murchison. All started as poor or near-poor boys, who made their fortune in the late 1920s and early 1930s, in some cases, like the Murchisons, by parlaying "hot oil" outside government limits into extra-profits. But each was completely unknown to the outside world until an article in a 1948 Life magazine argued that HL Hunt might be the richest person in the world. Soon the story of the "Big Rich" Texas oil fortunes captivated the nation, from then until the 1980s height and the "Dallas" TV series, and their real life exploits gave plenty of fodder for myth.

They all became big in politics, many like Sid Richardson and Clint Murchison, hobnobbing with Lyndon Johnson from his earliest days, but most, again like Sid Richardson, more cosy with Eisenhower, or, like Hunt, the even more radical right. Roy Cullen funded an early radio network headed by John Flynn, the onetime liberal turned rabid anti-New Dealer. HL Hunt funded "Facts Forum" another early Christian and right-wing show. But their funding for Sen. Joseph McCarthy led to a slew of bad-press and criticism of Texas "cretans" secretly running the country. Soon, however, their sons entered the picture. Clint Jr. became better known as the owner of the Cowboys, and Lamar Hunt as the owner of the Kansas City Chiefs. Their sons were playboys or eccentrics, who usually, like Bunker and Herbert Hunt, managed to lose their fortunes in odd schemes, like trying to corner the silver market.

If Burrough had stuck to these four oilmen and their families, it would have been a good tale. But every anecdote seemed to unleash a string of new and unrelated ones. Its a common writer's curse.

[Jack Latta · Rating 4 out of 5]

The names of buildings & roads in Houston and Dallas all make sense now

TLDR: the Super Bowl is named the Super Bowl because of Texas oil

[Patrick Fairbanks · Rating 2 out of 5]

Learned a lot about the history of the oil industry in Texas. But at a certain point, all the little squabbling and lawsuits and business deals of these major families get a bit boring and repetitive after 400 pages.

Well researched and informative.

[Tripp · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are some areas of the country I find particularly interesting. Most I can attribute to a personal connection (VA, NC, CA), because of what happens there (LA, NYC) or some combination (DC). Others are just so peculiar that they make for fascinating reading. These tend to be on the geographical fringe; places like Alaska, Maine and Texas. Bryan Burroughs (co-author of Barbarians at the Gate) tackles some of the key creators of the modern Texas in the Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes.

This book is a fun, but serious, read. It covers four families, the Hunts, the Cullens, the Murchisons and the lonely Sid Richardson. None of these names were terribly familiar to me, although I had a vague sense that Hunt=money at some point. Through luck, smarts and willingness to take risks continually, they built independent Texas oil fortunes in the 20s and 30s. Through their extravagant living, they created the idea of the insanely rich Texas oil tycoon and the culture of conspicuous consumption that lives on in Texas. Some of them were at least partially responsible for the rise of the Radical Right in 40s and 50s, although others were behind the rise of the greatest liberal of the second half of the 20th century, LBJ.

The stories follow a familiar pattern, but they are no less enthralling for it. Young penniless man takes a number of risks (including bigamy in one case) and then hits the jackpot. Newly rich man throws around his weight, gets burned by it and then lives to see his family decline as the scions make huge mistakes or battle viciously amongst themselves. Burroughs keeps the narrative moving quickly and his sympathetic look at these peculiar characters and their strange histories makes for good reading. It isn't just these families that make an appearance. We see a number of lesser (financial) lights, including the Bush family, who have oil to thank for their success.

In the conclusion, Burroughs notes that the time of the oil man has passed and the new Texas is a more cosmopolitan place, that doesn't have much time for poorly educated big hat oil men. It would be interesting. The place where you might find them still is China. In cities like Shanghai, the culture of mass consumption and sudden wealth is taking off. It will be interesting to see how they try to impact the power structure as the Texans did.

[Wanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very compelling and interesting "history" of the big four "wealthy beyond your wildest dreams" Texans. Burroughs discusses Roy Cullen, HL Hunt, Clint Murchison, and Sid Richardson. A few others are thrown in as other illustrations of the swaggering, egotistical, ill educated and small minded men who were lucky, ruthless and tenacious at a time when there was little in Texas beyond some sagebrush and skinny, malnourished cattle grazing on thousands of acres of brush and mesquite trees. A clever writer for the New Yorker referred to them as Troglodyte genus Texana. Don't you just love it! The discussion of the amount of oil, the lack of concern for the destruction of oil fields by overdrilling, the burning off of precious natural gas were fascinating. Anyway, Texans REVERE these guys. They are gods. I will never forget when HL Hunt's grandaughter moved to Midland in the 70s for a while. West Texans were positively orgasmic.
If you want to get a good flavor of Texas, read this book. It will open your eyes and help you to understand why Texans vote for ignoramuses like Rick Perry, where the rest of the country would be humiliated to have this nitwit as their governor. In Texas, money talks, and education is disdained as inconsequential. The fact that these guys, who had very little education had as much influence as they did on our politics is disconcerting. I guess I keep hoping that we actually have a better playing field than we do in crafting legislation. But again, money talks.
The book is written in a very accessible way. There are a few errors of spelling that I picked up, so shame on the editor. But then I find that editors and their craft don't really seem to matter in the push to publish a book these days. My only complaint about the book is that I'd have liked him to have thrown in some more interesting characters, but this is unfair. The book is about the big four and he has a right to narrow down his topic. It's just that it is such an interesting one and the times and places are so interesting, that I kept wanting more.

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book about the big four oilmen (aka the Big Rich) and their families in Texas from the 1930s into the 1980s. These were powerful men/families that through their immense wealth influenced Texas and the country both socially and politically.

The Big Four were Roy Cullen (Houston), H. L. Hunt and Clint Murchison, Sr. (Dallas), and Sid Richardson (Fort Worth). Bryan Burrough follows the trials and triumphs of each man and family(ies) with great dedication. Several men were racists and anti-Semites and were dedicated to establishing the Republican Party of Texas and pushing Texas and the country to the extreme right-wing.

Of the four two were major philanthropists: Roy Cullen (an ultra-conservative with a 4th grade education) almost single-handedly brought about the University of Houston and Sid Richardson (a lifelong Democrat) formed the Sid Richardson Foundation that makes grants to advance the missions of nonprofit educational, health, human service, and cultural organizations in Texas.

H. L. Hunt, another ultra-conservative, after his success as an oilman was established began pushing his right-wing agenda through a publication titled Facts Forum and later re-named LIFE LINE after Hunt became religious. Because of his conservative agenda Hunt's name was tied to the assassination of President John Kennedy although any connection was never proved.

For those interested in the days Texas the oil boom, how mega-money influenced politics, and a look inside the "odd" lives of the Big Rich this is the book for you! It is amazing!

[TJ · Rating 1 out of 5]

Spoiler alert: Conservatives are racist, corrupt, and evil. The big rich were ultra-conservatives; ultra-racist, ultra-corrupt, and ultra-evil. Oh yeah, and a bunch of Texans got extremely wealthy during the oil boom of the 1920s and 1930s, then had a bunch of family problems because of the fame and fortune. And they were ignorant hillbillies. And ultra-conservatives.
Interesting stories, but poorly told and infused throughout with the authors political biases. About a third of the book is his ultra-conservative conspiracy theories. Had to make myself finish it, yuck.

[Martha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even though it was pretty slow reading, I did enjoy what I read of the book. I definitely feel like I learned some about the oil business in Texas. I found it a little hard keeping up with the different "characters"--and they are characters. If I didn't have anything else to read, I would probably finish it, but I have so many books on my shelf that I am waiting to read, I just feel like I need to move on.

[Wes Knapp · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. My family has interest in the East Texas Oil field and my Dad's great aunts grew up in Dallas and their kids grew up with HL Hunt's kids there. So a lot of the history is personal to me - however - anyone with an interest in the history of wealth development and the ups and downs of life in a family where the patriarch is often an all or nothing gambler - will find this book fascinating.

Must read for Texas History

[Tracie Hall · Rating 3 out of 5]

Listened to the 19 CD's while driving--I find this the best way to get through some of these drier, lengthy tomes. The primary focus is on the lives and families of prominent Texas oil men, known in their day as the "Big Four", Roy Cullen, H. L. Hunt, Clint Murchison, and Sid Richardson. The author is a little heavy on politics, but it was fun learning about what seems to be a broad reaching and nation shaping bit of history I was completely unaware of.

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-written and eye opening history of 20th-Century Texas. Did you know that Big Oil was behind McCarthyism, two Presidents Bush, and a million other hypocrisies? You did? Well, I think there's still new stuff to be discovered in here. You can be entertained and horrified at the same time...

[TyAnn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Finally finished! What a tedious slog. The author was so condescending and sneering toward Texans, it was hard to separate fact from personal disdain. I lost count of the number of times he used “right wing nuts” to describe the title men. The facts were interesting. His rants against conservative values were not. Yuck. Sorry I picked this up.

[Tatiana · Rating 3 out of 5]

An eye-opener about Texas and about Houston. A definite must-read if you are interested in the state and city history. The writing is a bit loose with garden path sentences (more commas please) and the narrative a bit choppy but I learned a lot.

[M.E. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book contains a a lot of interesting (and at times outrageous) history, and it was a good introduction to Texas, since my wife and I recently moved here. But I was put off a bit by the obvious animosity that the author had for his subjects.

[Becky Elliott · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am learning a lot about Texas Oil history, but the book is hard to read. It isn't orginized very well.

[Chris Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

Got this book as a gift from my in-laws. Couldn't put it down! Fascinating story that follows four Texas oil families from early days on through to (most of) their demise. Highly recommend!

[Michael Cox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good look into the somewhat weird and bizarre history of early Texas oil fortunes. Even living in Texas and working in oil & gas for a while a lot of the information was new to me, a sign of how big the fall was and how little remains intact of the fortunes and legacy of these men. I think the author did a very good job documenting the wildness of the early booms and the unique Texas-ness of it all. Good read if you have a preexisting interest in Texas history or oil & gas.