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Breaking Rockefeller: The Incredible Story of the Ambitious Rivals Who Toppled an Oil Empire

Peter Doran, Viking, 352 pages, $28. Just over 100 years ago, Standard Oil was the undisputed leader of the global oil industry. American trustbusters were soon hot on the heels of its competition-killing owner, John D. Rockefeller. So too was a scrappy Anglo-Dutch company, the product of a 1907 merger of Shell Oil with Royal Dutch, which had defied fearsome odds to muscle onto Standard's home turf in America. The story of Marcus Samuel, a brilliant East London merchant, and Henri Deterding, a Dutch wheeler-dealer, is not new but is grippingly retold in "Breaking Rockefeller." The guts, greed and gusto of this cast of characters are what gives the book its vigor. The colorful backwaters where they waged their counter-offensives, from London to Texas and the Caspian Sea add historical flavor. Samuel's great coup was the first modern oil tanker, which enabled him to ship hydrocarbons through the Suez Canal. The book acknowledges that Royal Dutch Shell could not have toppled Standard Oil alone but tells the lively tale of how the forces came together. The book is timely in an era when America's shale revolution has upset the OPEC cartel's efforts to control the world's oil markets. It is a vivid reminder of the dangers of monopolies. And if Royal Dutch Shell's challenge to Standard Oil is any lesson, companies that develop alternative forms of energy will only become true challengers to Big Oil with guts, greed and better technology. They are not quite there yet.

THE ECONOMIST