|
|
Books : Cronies: How Texas Business Became American Policy-- and Brought Bush to PowerIn association with Amazon.comby: Robert Bryce  Amazon.com's Price: $14.00 Prices subject to change.Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
This item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping.
Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 976.4063 EAN: 9781586483371 ISBN: 1586483374 Label: PublicAffairs Manufacturer: PublicAffairs Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 352 Publication Date: July 05, 2005 Publisher: PublicAffairs Release Date: July 05, 2005 Studio: PublicAffairs Sales Rank: 77531 Related Items:
Editorial Review: Product Description: No other province holds more political and economic power than the Lone Star State. Two of the last three American presidents—and three of the last eight—have been Texans. Each of them got to the White House by exploiting a network of money and power that no other state can match. In Cronies, renowned investigative reporter Robert Bryce illuminates how Texas turned its vast energy resources into political power, and how a small group of Texas corporations, lawyers and politicians use that power to protect and defend their own economic interests. Through an absorbing narrative that moves from the days of the oil boom, through the rise and reign of LBJ, to today, Bryce profiles the Texans and the Texas corporations who have wielded—and continue to wield—great power in America's domestic and foreign policy, including the Bushes, James A. Baker III, Halliburton, Baker Botts, Ray Hunt, Bell Helicopter, and more. He shows how massive transfers of wealth from the rest of the country to Texas have allowed the state to prosper. Cronies demonstrates how George W. Bush is the living embodiment of Texas' crony networks, and how those networks continue to play critical roles in the 21st century. Distinguished by the same crack investigative skills and colorful storytelling that reviewers loved in Pipe Dreams, Cronies not only explains the astonishing rise of Texas; it offers a timely, provocative new way to look at American politics and our deadly entanglements in Iraq. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Oiling the wheels of politics...Investigative journalist Robert Bryce looks at the past and present of corporate welfare, Texas style, in this easy to read and relevant volume. During the Great Depression, via regulation to manage the sale of Texas 'hot oil' and the development of the prorationing system, federal power was co-opted to protect key Texas Big Oil interests, not just oil companies, but the whole network of drillers, contractors and law firms. The business / political power network required ... Read More Rating:  - Every Crony's Big in TexasRobert Bryce's previous book, Pipe Dreams, was a brilliant and rampaging indictment of corporate hubris, and that led into this book about the Texas energy industry's influence on modern American politics. This one tackles wider-ranging issues, and consequently is a little less powerful, although Bryce is a strong investigative journalist who is great at finding patterns and influences hidden beneath vast trends of politics and finance. Not only do Texas politicians and their cronies hold unprecedented ... Read More Rating: - The real bellwether stateIt has often been said that California is a bellwhether state, in that it sets trends that are followed by the rest of the US. In terms of culture and entertainment, this is true, but in terms of politics and economics, I would give that title to Texas after reading this book. Cronies is about the history of Texas from 1900 to now, and how this history is centered around oil. Many events that have played out on the world's stage regarding oil have had preludes in Texas. OPEC and its economic ... Read More Rating: - Split voteI would like to split my rating and give 4.5 stars for research and 2 stars for the writing. Mr. Bryce has done his homework, and does a good job of tying together a number of people and situations to reveal an evolving plot to Texasize the United States. However, he could have used more information in some areas and a lot less in others (I don't care about so many details of the Rice Baker center dinner, especially what they ate or how many roses were delivered). What this book badly needed was a good ... Read More Rating: - Indispensible for understanding the present messSimply put, this book provides the missing perspective which explains why Texans such as Lyndon Johnson, Tom DeLay, and the Bushes have a sense of entitlement to do as they please with the world's petroleum reserves. Texas pioneered the methods for controling market price of petroleum by setting up a mechanism which brought order to the chaotic Texas oil fields during the boom period in the 20's through 50's. The man who established OPEC modeled OPEC after that Texan invention. The Texans, once they had tasted the ... Read More Browse for similar items by category:
|
||