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Product Description In this amazing and at times ribald story, Laton McCartney tells how Big Oil handpicked Warren G. Harding, an obscure Ohio senator, to serve as our twenty-third president. Harding and his “oil cabinet” made it possible for cronies to secure vast fuel reserves that had been set aside for use by the U.S. Navy. In exchange, the oilmen paid off senior government officials, bribed newspaper publishers, and covered the GOP campaign debt. When news of the scandal finally emerged, the consequences were disastrous. Drawing on contemporary records newly made available to McCartney, The Teapot Dome Scandal reveals a shocking, revelatory picture of just how far-reaching the affair was, how high the stakes, and how powerful the conspirators–all told in a dazzling narrative style. Review “A terrific tale that resonates nearly a century on, at a time when many people are still wondering about the connections between Big Oil and politicians at the highest levels.” –Jon Meacham, author of Franklin and Winston “This is a story that has it all–a Jazz Age background, a pleasure-loving president surrounded by booze and chorus girls, boomtown capitalists from the Wild West, [and] conniving politicians. . . . [Laton McCartney has] a certain zest for Teapot’s sordid comedy [and] delivers fresh, arresting portraits of the main players, some of them lovable rogues, others beady-eyed scoundrels.” –The New York Times “The most thorough treatment of the scandals to date.” –Los Angeles Times Book Review “Titillating, tantalizing . . . The book reads like a novel. McCartney’s cast of characters jumps off the page.” –Baltimore Sun “A cautionary tale of what happens when corrupt and indifferent public officials give an industry undue influence over public policy.” –The Denver Post “Fascinating reading.” –St. Louis Post-Dispatch About the Author Laton McCartney is the author of the national bestseller Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story–The Most Secret Corporation and How It Engineered the World and Across the Great Divide: Robert Stuart and the Discovery of the Oregon Trail. McCartney has written extensively on business, finance, and politics for many national magazines. He and his wife, Nancy, divide their time between Wyoming and New York. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 1 A Reversal of Fortune Ardmore, Oklahoma, November 21, 1920 “The Oil King of Oklahoma” came back to the Randal Hotel and flopped down on the bed in room 28 without undressing. It was just after 6:00 p.m. Jake Hamon had been drinking most of the afternoon. He needed a nap if he was going to make supper. Clara Hamon was in the adjoining room when Jake came in. She listened as he dropped his keys and change on the bureau and collapsed on the bed. She and Jake had been together ten years. They shared the Hamon name but were neither married nor related. A few months after they met, Jake had paid his nephew Frank Hamon $10,000 to marry Clara and then sent him off on the first train to California. The marriage had been a “blind.” Jake wanted Clara for himself. Sharing the Hamon name made it easier for them to travel together, registering in hotels as Jake and Clara Hamon. Jake had left his wife and two children for Clara. A clerk in a dry goods store, Clara had been seventeen at the time, eighteen years Jake’s junior. With her wavy brown hair modestly done up, her deep blue eyes, and her reluctance to wear rouge, she looked more like an attractive young schoolteacher than Jake Hamon’s mistress. After they met, Jake offered her a job, sent her to stenography school, and took her out to the oil fields with him when he’d been wildcatting on the Osage and up on the Panhandle. Clara was smart and every bit as ambitious as Jake. For the past few years, she’d been acting as his business partner and adviser. “He was . . . a masterful man,” Clara said. “He dominated me from the first time I looked i