#149 The Big Rich (Oil Billionaires)

**David Senra** (0:00)
I want to tell you about a one-time-only limited event that I don't think you're going to want to miss. I am doing a live show with Patrick O'Shaughnessy from the Invest Like the Best podcast in New York City on October 19th. Patrick has interviewed over 300 of the world's best investors and founders for his podcast. I've read over 300 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs for my podcast. We'll be talking about what we learned from seven years of podcasting, sharing our favorite ideas and stories, and doing a live Q&A. There will also be special event-only swag. If you live in New York City, I think it's a no-brainer. But if not, I think it's a great excuse to fly in. I've already heard from a bunch of people that bought tickets. They're flying in from other cities. Some people are flying in from other countries. That's setting the bar really high, so I will have at least four shots of espresso or four energy drinks before or during the show so we can make it a night that you'll never forget. If you're interested in attending this unique live event, I will leave a link down below. I highly recommend you get your tickets today, and I hope I get to see you in New York on October 19th. It's hard to tell people about Texas.
It's hard to explain what it means to be a Texan. But if you grew up in Texas, as I did, it becomes a part of you, as if you're a member of a club.
The myths about Texas die so hard, mostly because Texans love them.
So much of it is wrapped up in oil.
But the fact is, growing up in Central Texas during the 1970s, I never met an actual oil man. It wasn't until I was 16, the weekend I served as an escort at a debutante ball, that I was introduced to the class of Texans known as the Big Rich.
They talked of boarding schools and weekends in Las Vegas and wine in Paris and jetting to London, and my head just spun and spun and spun.
Though I didn't realize it at the time, those were the years, the early and mid 1980s, when their era was ending. The fathers of those boys were going bankrupt.
When my editor suggested some kind of book on Texas oil, I was surprised how quickly a structure sprang to my mind. It would be not about the oil industry per se, but about the great Texas oil families, the ones who generated all those myths, the hunts, the basses, the merchants, the cullens.
I thought of them as the Big Four, though it wasn't until I began my research that I found out that they had been called exactly that. This book is built on three years of research, during which I plunged into dozens of Texas and out of state archives, interviewed surviving members of the Big Four families, and read more than 200 books and thousands of newspapers and magazine articles.
These and other histories served as a starting point to explore the rise and fall of the greatest Texas oilmen, many of whom are fast being forgotten. There's never been anything lasting written about Houston's flamboyant Glenn McCarthy, though there should be. It's hard to find anyone under 60 who remembers a Texas legend so famous in his day that he adorned the cover of Time Magazine. There's even been less written about the secretive Sid Richardson, once the richest man in America.
The joys of writing this book were multitude. There's nothing I love more than cruising the Texas backcountry.
One morning in 2005, I was in far west Texas. I entered a table land whose view was so breathtaking, I had to pull to the side.
There, as far as the eye could see, were oil wells. Hundreds, maybe thousands, a lost plateau, filled not with dinosaurs, but with the steel and wire and sweat of American industry.
Men had been out there for years, I realized, mapping the land, drilling holes in the earth, returning home to Dallas and Houston and Fort Worth with millions of dollars in their pockets.
This was a Texas, an America I had never seen, and I suddenly needed to know what became of these men and their fortunes.
Their stories, it turned out, were everything I had imagined and more.
There is truth behind legend. There really were poor Texas boys who discovered gushing oil wells and became overnight billionaires, patriarchs of squabbling families who owned private islands and colossal mansions and championship football teams, who slept with movie stars and jousted with presidents and tried to corner an international marketer too.