Martin R. Ansell provides the first comprehensive analysis of the business career of oilman Edward Laurence Doheny, one of the most successful and colorful entrepreneurs of the early twentieth century. Doheny's story begins in the mining camps of the Old West during the 1870s. Ansell shows how Doheny's rough beginning contributed to his later success and demonstrates that the fabled "Doheny luck" was actually a combination of practical knowledge, visionary ideas, and executive skill.

Because Doheny's personal papers were destroyed after his death in 1935, there has been no previous systematic attempt to reconstruct his life. As a reappraisal of Doheny's experience, this book adds significant new information about the early years of the oil industry and should interest scholars of business history, the history of the American West, and the history of California and Mexico.