"The author of the popular History of Oil podcast traces the early-20th-century rivalry between John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil and Royal Dutch Shell, describing the origins of partners Marcus Samuel, Jr. and Henri Deterding and how they used respective talents to break Rockefeller's daunting monopoly"-- NoveList.

At the height of the great oil boom of the 1870s-1880s, John D. Rockefeller was seemingly unstoppable. Capitalizing on the newly emerging industry that was changing the lives of people worldwide, Rockefeller eliminated his rivals to achieve near-total domination of the market. By 1889, he was at the peak of his power, having created one of the largest monopolies in history, so powerful that even the U.S. government was wary of challenging the great "anaconda" of Standard Oil. The Standard never loses--that is, until the unlikely duo of Marcus Samuel and Henri Deterding teamed up to form Royal Dutch Shell, and set the stage for the toppling of Standard Oil. This account of ambition, oil, and greed traces Samuel's rise from canny outsider to the heights of the British aristocracy, Deterding's conquest of America, and the collapse of Rockefeller's oil empire. Taking readers through the rough and tumble of East London's streets and the twilight turmoil of tsarist Russia to the halls of the British Parliament and right down New York's Broadway, international affairs expert Peter Doran offers a fresh perspective on how Samuel and Deterding beat the world's richest man at his own game.--Adapted from dust jacket.