• The Teapot Dome Scandal

  • How Big Oil Bought the Harding White House
  • By: Laton McCartney
  • Narrated by: William Hughes
  • Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
  • 4.2 out of 5 stars (132 ratings)

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The Teapot Dome Scandal  By  cover art

The Teapot Dome Scandal

By: Laton McCartney
Narrated by: William Hughes
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Publisher's summary

The Teapot Dome scandal of the early 1920s was all about oil - hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of petroleum. When the scandal finally broke, the consequences were tremendous. President Harding's legacy was forever tarnished, while "Oil Cabinet" member Albert Fall was forced to resign and was imprisoned for a year. Others implicated in the affair suffered prison terms, commitment to mental hospitals, suicide, and even murder. The Republican Party and the oil-company CEOs scrambled to cover their tracks and were mostly successful. Key documents mysteriously disappeared; important witnesses suffered sudden losses of memory. Though a special investigation was authorized, the scope of the wrongdoing was contained by administration stonewalling. But newly surfaced information indicates that the scandal was even bigger than originally thought.
©2008 Laton McCartney (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History

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What listeners say about The Teapot Dome Scandal

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  • 4 out of 5 stars
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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Harding's return to normalcy: corruption

We can complain a lot about present day government corruption, but until you read this book you have no idea how bad it can get. The story almost sounds like a novel - except it's true. And if you thought OJ's trial had a strange result (not guilty in the criminal trial, liable in the civil), Teapot Dome easily tops that. The Interior Secretary, Albert Fall, was convicted of taking a bribe from an oil man who, in a separate trial, was acquitted of bribing Fall. Fall really was a fall guy. (I'm not giving anything away here -- the characters make the story here, not the legal verdicts).
The narration is very good. The only quibble I have is that the narrator sometimes sounded as if he were going a bit too fast. A great listen.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

brings you right into the 1920s

This book is both well-narrated & well-written. A fine slice-of-history piece that makes you feel as if you are living in the teens & 20s (I mean 1910-1925 or so), puts you into the political game of the time (where corruption was a much more accepted part of politics, frankly, than is the case today), and uses the Teapot Dome affair & the Harding presidency as the crux of the story. I would recommend this to anyone interested in American history, not just those after knowledge about long-ago scandals.

While the book is very detailed, it is not overly so. It needs this detail to tell the story, and it is the detail that moves the story along.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Plain-spoken, well-told, stunning

Fans of history of political and business fraud, corruption and scandal are well rewarded here. It blows my mind that this was the way things were run in top echelons of USA government so recently. There is a rich history here, as well, of the development of the west (and foreign affairs with Mexico) as regards commercial development of mineral resources. We would do well to keep an eye on the disposition of our publicly-owned land and mineral assets in this country: the huge payouts make it a natural breeding ground for political corruption.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

What was the real story?

We are forced to hear about trivia concerning rumors at the convention, etc. Was all the real information destroyed following Harding's death? The message could have been shortened to 1/4 the length of this rambling dissertation.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Interesting for history buffs.

Nice read if yoy are looking to improve your knowledge of how govt and business conducted themselves during the early 20th century.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Dense but well written & complete

This book might have been better in written form or with prior knowledge of the principals. I had to backtrack several times & research the case to keep the pieces together. Not bad for someone with no prior knowledge about the scandal. Otherwise great.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

impossible to put down

This book is well researched and tells a gripping story of corruption. The oil barons of yesteryear unsurprisingly engaged in the same shenanigans as big industry today.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

William Hughes is a great narrator

Awesome story of pure, unadulterated greed. We all have it in us, and to pretend to hold public figures up to a higher standard is simple folly. Nothing has changed in our corporate and political system since the 20s except for the fact that the players have gotten better at tricking us! Excellent writing, very enjoyable.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

It's a great story

I enjoyed the book and the objective coverage that it takes 80 years to write. Performance was good easy to follow and clear.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

I'm sad I couldn't finish this.

I really looked forward to reading about this scandal and while it is sensationalized and almost crudely funny humor did interest me the way it was read was not. I really am into both history and scandals and I am not new to long or almost seemingly 'boring' retellings. I tell you I am a girl who sat through the Select Committee's report on the Watergate scandal and I just recently finished a 25 hour length telling of the Nuremburg Trials. I really like court, politics, law, scandals, etc.

This was bad enough that I could not finish it. I got an hour in and dropped it. The narrator speaks too quickly for me to absorb anything as if he himself is telling it through the mouth of a 1920's man. I enjoy how he sounds as it adds atmosphere but it is much too distracting and I cannot focus on what is being said. There are WAY too many characters being absolutely lobbed at you and the pacing is absurd. I feel like I am on a runaway train. Between the fast paces there are sudden stops that cause a reader to lurch forward mentally. I simply cannot listen to this reading of it and I am disappointed because I really looked forward to the 10 hour seemingly in-depth look here as that is the longest version on this service and that this topic is very scarce. Oh well.

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