>> that all happens tonight on c-span2's booktv. and now here's author peter doran on the rise of the royal dutch company. >> like duran duran, except there's just one of me. [inaudible conversations] >> all right, folks, thanks for joining us today. [inaudible] we're really excited to have peter doran here -- [inaudible] more those of you who know peter, he works for -- [inaudible]

his new book expands everywhere from russia to london to broadway at one point, and it's a pretty interesting read. i don't want to give too much away, so without further ado, please welcome peter. >> thank you very much. [applause] great. so this is, this is actually a really big pleasure for me to be here at kramers books. it is, in many ways, the culmination of many years of research and efforts to put together what i've always -- an answer to a question that i've always wanted to ask, and that was who were the other guys and gals, who were the other people who compromised this story of oil. a lot of times we know about john d. rockefeller, the richest man in the world when he was

alive. and today of all days for the release of the soft cover of "breaking rockefeller" is important because i did not pick this day. but may 23rd is the 80th anniversary of rockefeller's death. so 80 years ago john d. rockefeller on this day died. some historical symmetry there is always great for someone who likes really good stories about history. interestingly enough, on the day that he died rockefeller failed to achieve what was essentially the biggest goal of his life. sure, it was to get rich. sure, it was to become this very powerful oil magnate. but as he aged ask as he achieved his first goal, his new goal emerged, and that was he truly wanted to live to be 100 years old. this was going to be the accomplishment of his life. and so when he died on may 23rd, 1937, he was two years -- i

counted -- can two years, one month, 15 days shy of his 100th birthday. sadly, rockefeller failed. but in the process, he died a great philanthropist. and it's interesting because on the very last day of his life, one of the very last things that rockefeller did was to a pay off the mortgage of the euclid avenue baptist church back in cleveland, ohio. the place where he had his first very powerful religious experience, an experience that would not only define his life, define how he viewed himself and those around him, but create one of the greatest ironies of this man. and that is that every sunday rockefeller would belt out hymns from the pews and considered himself a very godly man. ask yet he was -- and yet he was ruthless in those who he went up against. he was utterly ruthless in destroying all competition, and he created elaborate explanations in his own mind for

why his wealth was a sign of the blessing from god even though the people he destroyed viewed him as the darth vadar of his age, as the true villain of his time. and so i wanted 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 points were raised already, and it is fascinating to really understand the stakes of what the, these upstarts and underdogs were up against. so after he died on may 23rd, 1937, "the new york times" went out and actually dug up one of his old tax returns and tried to answer the question, how rich was rockefeller truly? and it turns out that when you, you adjust for inflation at

those scales and time differentials, average inflation adjustment just doesn't do it justice. so one of the things that i did was i used some excellent scholarship from some other economists, and i calculated how much would rockefeller or have been worth at the peak of his power in today's money. and it turns out that rockefeller was not a rich man. rockefeller was an incredibly wealthy man. when you do the calculations, it turns out rockefeller was worth $357 billion by today's 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's fortune, bill gates have a smoldering ember. this was the accomplishment of his life. and it is in looking at how rockefeller systematically collected that wealth and in the

process not only took his company -- a company known as standard oil -- into becoming the largest refinery in the oil business, standard wasn't even the largest oil company in a sense in the oil business. standard at peak of his power was the oil business. and that is when the story begins in "breaking rockefeller." that's the moment, in 1889, when rockefeller is essentially the king of broadway. he has created a luxurious headquarters for himself on 26 broadway. you can still go there today. and in, at the top of odd broadway -- of broadway, rockefeller ran one of the largest oil production, refinery 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% of all the oil on the planet. if you can stop and think about that for a moment in our own day and age, yes, things are different today, but think about one man or one company that controls 80% of all the oil on planet earth. that was john d. rockefeller. and it also gives you an idea about the stakes for those who went up against him. and 1889, as the story begins, the world is making its transition from coal to oil. and the individuals who would help push that transition along, who would help make the world that we enjoy and live in today had a problem. rockefeller was their problem. and from that problem, we saw the outbreak of what is, essentially, the world's first great oil war. and from that war we have a lot of, a lot of important things come. first of all, that war transformed rockefeller from being that rich man into the wealthiest human being who has ever lived.

that war 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's a reason for that. and the reason is the war to break rockefeller's empire. it helped create this global price for oil. and it gave us a lot of legacies; legacies of science, legacies of innovation and legacies of government regulation that we still live with today. i wanted to tell this story because i wanted to show those end -- enduring links between oil's past and our present. and so the stakes for -- and more importantly -- the lives of individuals who helped make that possible. so who were these central figures? i started digging into it, and it turns out there are some rather colorful characters. the first one in the center of

this story is a fellow named marcus samuel jr. marcus samuel was not an oilman. marcus samuel was, in a sense, an east london merchant-trader. he didn't know very much about the oil business, but he knew the east asian import/export business. his early rival in the oil industry, as story unfolds, was a take-no-prisoners oil executive named henry debtording. he had, essentially, inherited a company from his mentor who abruptly died and left him as the interim director of a company known as royal dutch. samuel's company would eventually become known as shell, and it was that herculean rivalry between marcus samuel and henri which initially defined the early part of hair relationship. they were, essentially, frenemies in the modern sense

because they were enemies who also got along, but at the end 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 to standard oil spent all of its time fighting each other. mainly across the vast ports of the far east in asia. and so as i'm unpacking this story through my research, i suddenly hit upon an interesting idea, and that idea defines the narrative and the story structure for how i tell this history of the war to break rockefeller's empire. and that idea was this: in almost every single previous historical treatment of this fight against rockefeller, henri, the unproven, take-no-prisoners oil executive, always gets top billing. marcus samuel is always at the bottom of the marquee.

and the reason is actually quite simple. because, in the end, henri defeated marcus, in a sense n their commercial competition with even other. -- with each other. and that defeat resulted in the combination of two powerful companies known today as royal dutch and shell, or the shell oil group. marcus was always getting second shrift. and i thought to myself, why not tell the story upside down? why not look at hamlet from the perspective of horatio? why not tell the story of don question owe today, but in this case look at sancho panza as the true here reof the -- hero of the story? and marcus was the true hero of the story. in order to beat rockefeller, in order to outflank the most powerful oil monopoly of his time, marcus had to unravel a complicated, five-part puzzle of

distance, geography, risk, technology and greed. and in doing so, he did a lot of amazing things such as kick start the innovation that would lead to the modern oil tanker, developments and breakthroughs that are still used today, in today's oil tankers. finding a way to finally open up the recently or most recently-inaugurated suez canal to oil shipments, shipments which still transit the canal today. but it was not until 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. and i start unpacking all of these things, and i think to myself: this is a story that has to be told. it is a story that really has to be told right. and along the way there was not just marcus and henri, but there were a whole cast of characters,

many of them forgotten. people who were forgotten to history. heroes who made their contribution, contributions we all actually enjoy today and yet we don't even know about it. there were amazing figures such as the bespectacled italian geologist who is, essentially, reinventing petroleum geography one shovel scoop at a time in the wilds of sumatra. there was the one-armed prophet of oil in spending top, texas, a guy who couldn't have been more wrong about absolutely everything he ever touched and yet thanks to patillo's failure, we actually have the kick-start of the texas oil boom, an event that redefined the state of texas as we know. and, frankly, american power as we know. and we also have amazing, trail-blazing female -- an amazing trail-blazing female

journalist such as ida tarbell, a woman whom rockefeller destroyed. rockefeller broke ida's father both financially and, frankly, psychologically, certainly emotionally over the course of his attempt as an independent oilman in the wilds of pennsylvania. rockefeller broke, broke ida's father. and ida couldn't do much as a result. she was only an adolescent at the time. and so ida did the only thing that any woman in western pennsylvania could have done at the time, and that was to get out. in order to get out, she had to get an education. and so she became the very first woman in her graduating class of allegheny college to graduate from college. she traveledded across the atlantic, studied at the sorbonne and eventually met a fellow with a fabulous moustache, an incurable taste for floppy bow ties, 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, had started mcclure's magazine. the the pair -- it was the pairing of mcclure's magazine and ida tarbell's savage wit, her meticulous research and her mission in many ways to essentially affect her final revenge against the man who destroyed her father, john k. rockefeller. and so in -- john d. rockefeller. and so in telling that story, i actually get to the heart of the real problem that we face in today's day and age, a problem that defines our current policy debate. and it is traveling the country and talking with folks from the atlantic to the pacific, especially around the oil industry, the revitalizedded oil industry of the united states. and it is this. there is a question, and it is an unsolved question in the american body politic and it is

a question that "breaking rockefeller" wades into. and that is, do you need just the courts to protect you against monopolists? is the supreme court and 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 sword 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 that connection between oil's past and our present. and along the way, you get to have a fantastic, rip-roaring, good story in the guise of "breaking rockefeller." that was perhaps, i think, the best part of writing this book,

was in going back and systematically recreating some of the most famous and often vanished places that marcus samuel and john d. rockefeller would have known, but today they're completely gone. and so the story, for example, in showing how the world made that important transition from coal to 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 to get to the oil fields of tsarist russia. i even found an actual menu that was used on the outbound voyage -- outbound journey from paris and got to follow step by step, station by station what a rider would have experienced mainly through the diaries and reporting of actual americans who 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 -- oil -- excuse me, this was not the gas and electric orient express. they weren't burning fuel oil and electricity. fuel oil allow for more powerful engines, greater horsepower, heavier train carriages, more luxuries. but at the time, the coal-burning oil in orient express was something of a rink key dick affair. it was still luxurious by the standards of day if you were european,; if you were american, it was actually a disappointing experience. so in showing how the world was before oil, you get to actually explore the experiences of these people. traveling through the jungles of sumatra and actually following the trek of these trail-blazing geologists who, for the very

first time, managed to take the ideas of science and make them practical for oilmen who were actually not really -- they didn't care about science. they just wanted to know, okay, wise guys, how do i use your science to find the next big gusher or the next flowing well? turns out geologists, like scientists today, could do a really good job about telling you exactly why oil had appeared in a certain place. but up until the jungles of sumatra, no one had been able to to use science to 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 bespectacled italian and his german colleague named dr. c. schmidt actually undertook it to do just that. financial necessity drove them to that. they actually achieved something great. to this day, the language of geology and science permeates

the oil industry, and it is thanks to the trail blazers and these unknown figures that we actually enjoy the benefits of hydrocarbons today. and finally, there was the ports of the far east. then, as now, the oil world and the energy world hung on china's insatiable desire for energy. in answering that, in quenching that desire -- today just as back in marcus samuel's time -- great fortunes can be made or lost. and so as i'm telling this story, i'm starting to uncover a lot of these connections. and for me, that's the most important part about "breaking rockefeller." because i love history, i love a great story, i love a great narrative-driven story that features real people up against somewhat daunting but real stakes. they have to gamble big. sometimes they fail, sometimes they succeed. that's' why i go out to read books. i always love to find that book.

and in writing "breaking rockefeller," i wantedded to write the kind of book i've always wanted to read. history is all well and good, but unless we can learn from it, then it's 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 this audience. not only folks who got here early, but the folks who are crammed in the back there. once we're done, i'd encourage some of you to sit down, and we might do some q&a. but in doing this, i thought i would talk about the controversies, the heresies and the legacies of "breaking rockefeller." things that are emerged in conversations with folks around the country as i've been discussing this book. first, the controversies. a lot of people have said -- and i think it's a good point -- well, wait a minute. "breaking rockefeller" isn't -- you're not really talking about breaking the man. in fact, rockefeller did great. the break-up of his oil empire, thanks to the supreme court

decision of 1911, was a bountiful shock wave. it was in breaking up this giant monolith into smaller pieces, each one rockefeller became the majority owner of, and once those companies were listed on the new york stock exchange, rockefeller -- the wealth of rockefeller proliferated. wasn't "breaking rockefeller" actually a good thing? and the answer is, sure. in some sense. this story is not about breaking rockefeller, the man. this story is about breaking everything that he stood for. because in business rockefeller always won even if he had to cheat. that's not good business. that's not fair play. and in dealing from the the bottom of the deck to best his competitors, rockefeller created a monopoly that was a predator, a monopoly that preyed upon average people. that's 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, i'm encouraged by the fact that the upstart, these upstarts and underdogs managed to accomplish just that. some heresies as we've heard about, i mentioned earlier this idea that the federal government is enough, that all you need is a studious legal code and a dedicated bureaucrat, and that's really all you need in order to defend customers from predatory pricing practices. perhaps. but, no. really what you actually need is you need both. you have to have, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how good your regulations are, doesn't matter how dedicated your bureaucrats are. someone has to wade into the marketplace and offer a commercial alternative, or there is no true competition. washington, d.c. cannot sign a memo and say, quick, we need competition. make out happen. -- make it

happen. somebody has to take that financial risk, someone with has to risk failure in order to create true competition. and as we know even after the supreme court broke apart rockefeller's empire, parts of it still were colluding with each other. the shadow or the practices of rockefeller's corporate culture, this monopolistic idea, never really was burned away. as one oligarch said of rockefeller after the breaking up of standard oil, how on earth is someone going to force someone else to to compete against themselves? it's really hard to do. someone else has to come in. and so i would say that "breaking rockefeller," the book, puts forward a somewhat heretical idea in our own day and age. and that is, yes, you have to have competition. competition is good. in many ways this book is an ode to competition, and i'm very proud of the reactions and the debates that it has inspired. and i think the last part is

probably the most compelling, and this is part i will end on. because you, i often get the question, well, isn't oil bad? and shouldn't we not be focused on oil anymore? shouldn't we be focused on the alternatives to oil? and i say, absolutely. in the sense that we have options. we have alternatives to kind of energy options that marcus samuel and rockefeller or knew in their day and age. but we can learn from oil's past in order to help define our energy future. this will be a day -- there will be a day, it's probably going to be decades from now, but there will be a day when a country like saudi arabia runs out of customers before they ever run out of crude. this is because the options and they weres to traditional hydrocarbons like oil are becoming cheaper, more available, and they make a lot more sense in certain markets.

but we will always still have oil. we'll always still have a need for oil. what do we -- so how do to we learn about it? well, turns out if you take the exact problem set that marcus samuel had to solve in order to beat john d. rockefeller at his open game, this puzzle of distance, geography, risk, technology and greed, and you overlay it onto today's energy markets from the oil fields of china where china probably has potentially vast resources of natural gas they could us through fracking -- access through fracking using american ingenuity and technology . if you go and look at the e. u.'s antitrust fight, the modern-day era energy monopoly, or if you look at some of the exact same similar problems we've had in the united states, market problems, transportation problems that have resulted from the rebirth of our own oil industry, if you apply that

exact same problem set of distance, geography, risk, technology and greed, it all works. and so the final chapter, without giving away any major spoilers here -- because at heart i'm an analyst, and so i have to, i can't write a book without giving policy recommendations -- the final chapter actually takes a look at how we can take these exact same lessons from the past and use them to identify answers to some of our most vexing energy problems today. a rip-roaring good story, high stakes, upstarts and incredible odds, and yet something we can learn from and apply to our own day and age? >> well, for me, that was a story that had to be told and had to be told right. and i really want to thank most especially my wife charlotte who ease here who actually -- who's here who actually in no small part helped make book a reality. least of which you can thank her for all the excellent sentences.

she was an inspiration, and every good writer has an editor who informs them that they have to kill their darlings. [laughter] and so charlotte in many ways was mind. anyway, thank you very much. what i thought we would do is take some q&a, and ask i'm happy to answer your questions. and i'd end courage some of you to come and sit down who arrived after we got started. so thank you very much. [applause] >> all right. i've got a mic here for folks asking, and do feel free to grab a seat. >> yeah. so what kind of was look feller's animus to focus -- rockefeller's animus to focus -- [inaudible] after the break-up of standard oil, he actually achieved quite possibly the wealthiest man in history. yet before that it seem his main focus was on, basically,

controlling in its entire i the oil industry -- entirety the oil industry. >> the problem and the animus, as you say, for rockefeller was price. back in the early boom time of the oil industry when any tom, dick or harry with access to a steam pump, essentially, a drilling rig and the authorization of a local land owner could have been an oilman, the onrush of oil production threw the price of oil around like a lash. and if you actually look at the price, it went through these peaks and valleys that if it had happened to your 401(k), you'd feel rich one day and broke and terrified the next. this happened with alarming frequency. because the industry was getting started, and it went through these terrible booms and busts. rockefeller was a refiner. he was in the downstream or midstream section of the industry, and so the ups and

downs of the price of oil was throwing his balance sheet into chaos. he couldn't predict things. and so in his mid 20s, rockefeller left cleveland, he traveledded to pennsylvania, and -- traveledded to pennsylvania, and he subjected the early oil industry to a me nod study. he pulled out his pun concern methodical study. he asked so many questions of local islemen at the time that he -- local oilmen at the time that he actually acquired a local nickname. folks just called him the sponge. because he was absorbing the collective wisdom of the oil industry. that was a terrible mistake. because in doing so, rockefeller came to a startling conclusioning. in his view, and i think it was wrong, but in his view, competition wasn't a benefit to the oil industry. competition was the enemy. competition was the problem. and so this, from this idea came

a conclusion. if you could throttle competition by controlling, say, the refining sector, the thing that turns oil from a useless product into something that people need, whoever could control the refining sector could ultimately be a rule-giver, could dictate prices, could set quotas, could bring rationality. that was the start. the problem is that rock feller never stopped. -- rockefeller never stopped. this animus to control competition, to view it as unchecked, unregulated, irresponsible competition, it's something that we think is a good thing when, say, uber or other ride-sharing apps go up against the taxi monopolies. but in rockefeller's mind, this was bad. and so i think ultimately though for rockefeller that was, that was his fatal flaw. he started and did not stop. the road to control the oil industry was, it was a mission

in his life that ultimately was a great, did great harm. and those who helped to break apart this empire did great good not only for the people who were alive at the time, but in many ways for folks who are alive today. yep? >> the issue of price fluctuations. when the more sort of capitalistic -- [inaudible] futures markets, when does that start to develop in oil? >> with the futures markets, i don't get into the development of the futures or derivatives markets. what i do look at are two pivotal moments, actually, in the development of the energy world. the first was an obscure notice which was posted at a open outcry market in pennsylvania for oil. and this notice said as of such and such a day in the near future, the standard oil

company -- keep in mind, the standard oil monopoly -- will only buy and sell oil at a price that the global market will bear. that was big, because what that signified was the arrival of competition into the united states in a big way. what i look at in the book and we explore through the actual retellings of first-person accounts was what the rise of russian oil did. and, essentially, it did this: it created so much crude in the world that the artificially high price that standard was keeping in the united states was now at risk to any russian oil baron with access to an oil tanker to sail up to a port in boston or philadelphia and unload their kerosene, challenging the standard oil monopoly on its home turf.

so in looking at how the rise of large alternative production, different companies offering competing products through a global distribution chain, in many ways doing, using standard's business model better than standard was employing it, this allowed for the formation of what we now know today as a global price. the price of oil in one country is the same as the price of oil in another country. the other thing is the way in which standard didn't play fair. standard oil sometimes didn't have to drive its competitors into bankruptcy. standard oil could buy them in the open market. and that was almost what happened to a very fledgling royal dutch shell, this dutch competitor led by the hard-charging henri detterding. they had common shares. standard oil could simply buy the company.

except royal dutch was worth too much money. its stock was too high. so standard, it is widely believed and i actually show some evidence of where i think standard -- you can catch standard doing this -- started manipulating the market. rockefeller's company started spreading fake news about royal dutch shell as a way of rattling investors. golly, that's something we have a problem with today. and so as a result, royal dutch shell created what is essentially special shares, practices that we would all look at and say, well, that's just typical corporate governance, ways to protect yourself from a hostile takeover. this was cutting edge finance in the 1890s. developments that were actually pioneered as a way to protect themselves against the predatory commercial practices of standard. so competition's great. the free market must play a role. but, again, there has to be a balance.

because the free market left up checked -- left unchecked without smart, self-protective mechanisms or rules to prevent predation can create problems of its own. you must have a balance, you must have that shield and that sword combined. combining those two is a great way to answer a lot of the enduring questions we face not only in energy, but in other sectors of the economy. ah, yes. >> peter, you're an expert on so many issues. what inspired you to focus on this personality? why this topic? since, like i said, you're an expert on so many issues? why rockefeller? >> why this topic. truth is, there was -- i've read about some really wild and crazy folks who did something that just sounded so, so insane i was a little bit jealous that i hadn't had a chance to take part of it.

and that was back in the early 2000s at the start of the 0s. a group of oil experts, videographers, other industry folks purchased for themselves a old world war ii soviet motorcycle. and in the sidecar of this motorcycle, they put a barrel of crude oil from asker azerbaijan. and what they did was they followed the course of a phantom pipeline that did not yet exist. in this moak. and it -- in this motorcycle. and it became this wild group of motorcycles who filmed themselves doing terribly dangerous things across dangerous parts of the world and also in turkey, a safer part, in order to make a point. and they wanted to draw international attention to the fact that this phantom pipeline was not yet built. pipeline was facing so many problems, that they actually

needed to do a stunt in order to general rate attention and perhaps some momentum -- generate attention and perhaps some momentum by delivering the very first barrel of crude from baku to the turkish port of -- [inaudible] that was then. ed today, finally, the btc pipeline is a reality. but in overcoming the impediments that the folks who built this pipeline had to overcome, they faced this problem set. and, again, it is the exact same kind of problem set that marcus samuel faced. oil is never where people need it. distance. geography is eternal. there are always going to be chokepoints and geographic impediments that prevent oil from getting -- or energy from getting where it is to where it needs to be. geography. risk, someone has to weigh into the marketplace. technology. technology defines the oil industry. it defines so many other

industries. the innovations like the development of the modern oil tanker or other pipeline breakthroughs. technology has helped to make our modern world possible. and, of course, greed. and as we saw, greed is a double-sided coin, a two-sided coin. greed is good in creating an incentive for someone to weigh into a marketplace. greed can also get out of hand, and that is embodied in one man, the most powerful monopolist of his time and wealthiest human being who has ever lived, john d. rockefeller. the breaking of what rockefeller stood for was just a story, as i say, that i really wanted to tell well. any other questions? these are good. well, i guess the final thought and what i would encourage all of you to do as you look at "breaking rockefeller" is to perhaps ask this question, because for me, it was the hardest. i offer an answer, but it was

the hardest in writing this book, and that is that john d. rockefeller, i believe, was one of the most complex human beings who has ever lived. wealth amplified all that was great and noble and also ruthless and, in the financial sense, blood thirsty about rockefeller. it collided headlong with his baptist faith in which he believed that there was a just god, and he was doing the work of god. and that tension, i think, really affected how rockefeller viewed himself, how he viewed his competitors and, ultimately, it inspired his actions throughout his life. one of the cool postscripts of this story is we started this discussion talking about rockefeller's wealth and the size of that wealth. it is interesting to think that to this day rockefeller's wealth still lives on through philanthropic vehicles such as the rockefeller foundation which is one -- to this day, one of

the largest philanthropic donor organizations in the world. the great irony, of course, is that rockefeller's wealth was created on oil,ing and yet. >> our own day and age the rock to feller foundation is committedded to doing things like spending rockefeller's money to help mitigate the effects of climate change. the little ironies of life are perhaps the sweetest. so in asking and answering for yourself that question of who was rockefeller, this man, and what drove the upstarts and underring dogs to try and break his monopoly, i try and capture that in the book. i try and make it a compelling, narrative-driven story, and i really hope all of you enjoy reading it as much as i enjoyeded writing it. so with that, i really want to thank you, and i look forward to signing copies when we're done. so thank you very much. [applause]

>> if you wouldn't mind pushing your chair toss the side here so folks can make it up, we'd appreciate it. thank you. [inaudible conversations] >> c-span, where history up folds dale -- unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. >> next on booktv, roxane gay discusses her body and its impact on her life in her memoir, "hunger." this program contains language some may find offensive