The oil industry in the United States has been the subject ofinnumerable histories. But books on the development of the naturalgas industry and the electricity industry in the U.S. are scarce.Edison to Enron is a readable flowing history of two ofAmerica's largest and most colorful industries. It begins with the story of Samuel Insull, a poor boy fromEngland, who started his career as Thomas Edison's right-hand man,then went on his own and became one of America's topindustrialists. But when Insull's General Electric's energy empirecollapsed during the Great Depression, the hitherto Great Man wasdenounced and prosecuted and died a pauper. Against that backdrop,the book introduces Ken Lay, a poor boy from Missouri who began hiscareer as an aide to the head of Humble oil, now part of ExxonMobil. Lay went on to become a Washington bureaucrat and energyregulator and then became the wunderkind of the natural gasindustry in the 1980s with Enron. To connect the lives of these two energy giants, Edison toEnron takes the reader through the flamboyant history of theAmerican energy industry, from Texas wildcatters to the greatpipeline builders to the Washington wheeler-dealers. From the Reviews... "This scholarly work fills in much missing history about two ofAmerica's most important industries, electricity and naturalgas." —Joseph A. Pratt, NEH-Cullen Professor of History andBusiness, University of Houston "... a remarkable book on the political inner workings of theU.S. energy industry." —Robert Peltier, PE, Editor-in-Chief, POWERMagazine "This is a powerful story, brilliantly told." —Forrest McDonald, Historian