Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create accountShop small, give big!
With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of local bookstores.
Start giftingLimited-time offer
Get two free audiobooks!
Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.
Sign up todayTaking on the Trust
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreLong before the rise of megacorporations like Walmart and Microsoft, Standard Oil controlled the oil industry with a monopolistic force unprecedented in American business history. Undaunted by the ruthless power of its owner, John D. Rockefeller, a fearless and ambitious reporter named Ida Minerva Tarbell confronted the company known simply as “The Trust.” Through her peerless fact gathering and devastating prose, Tarbell pioneered the new practice of investigative journalism. Her shocking discoveries about Standard Oil and Rockefeller led to a dramatic confrontation that culminated in the landmark 1911 Supreme Court antitrust decision, forever altering the landscape of modern American industry. Based on extensive research, Taking on the Trust is a vivid and dramatic history of the Progressive Era with powerful resonance for the early twenty-first century.
Steven Weinberg won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979 as well as the National Medal of Science and the Lewis Thomas Prize for the Scientist as Poet, among other honors. He was the Josey Regental Professor of Science at the University of Texas in Austin and the author of many books, including Dreams of a Final Theory and To Explain the World.
Pam Ward has had many incarnations, including private detective, classical musician, television talk-show host, and actress, having performed in dinner theater, summer stock, and Off-Broadway, as well as in commercials, radio, and film. But she found her true calling reading books for the blind and physically handicapped for the Library of Congress Talking Books program, for which she received the prestigious Alexander Scourby Award from the American Foundation for the Blind. An AudioFile Earphones Award winner, her many audiobooks include Dancing in the Streets by Barbara Ehrenreich, Breaking Free by Lauraine Snelling, The Second Journey by Joan Anderson, and Lion in the White House by Aida D. Donald. She now records from her studio amidst the beauty of the Southern Oregon mountains.
Reviews
“A demonstration that the power of wealth was not absolute and the power of the press to expose corruption was not to be ignored.”
“This extensively researched account…is a truly exceptional piece of work worthy of multiple listens. Pam Ward reads with vigor and enthusiasm, presenting Weinberg’s account of Ida Tarbell and justice during the Progressive Era with honesty and resolve. Ward reads with remarkable clarity but never slows to a lethargic pace. While the subject may seem aimed at a limited audience, the topics of discussion are largely applicable in today’s modern world, and Ward seems positively aware of this in her reading.”
“Ward effortlessly holds the listener’s attention with her straightforward delivery of Weinberg’s complex tapestry of history and biography.”
“This is a fascinating and well-written account of the development of monopoly capitalism and the birth of investigative journalism…This book tells a dramatic story in an engaging style and will be a good addition for both public and academic libraries.”
“Tarbell emerges as a remarkably intelligent, diligent and principled woman with great independence of spirit.”
Expand reviews