2.5 Bryan Burrough, Former Wall Street Journal Reporter and Author to speak in J-sch

Thursday, 2/5
1-2 p.m.
CMA 5.160
Free Admission

Award-winning journalist and author BRYAN BURROUGH will speak to students about his books and path to a successful career in journalism and book writing, and will be available to answer students' questions.

Burrough is a former Wall Street Journal reporter who is now special correspondent for Vanity Fair and three-time winner of the John Hancock Award for excellence in financial journalism. His 1990 bestseller BARBARIANS AT THE GATE, about the leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco, became a movie starring James Garner.  His numerous books also include PUBLIC ENEMIES: AMERICA'S GREATEST CRIME WAVE AND THE BIRTH OF THE FBI, 1933-1934.  Burrough's new book, THE BIG RICH: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE GREATEST TEXAS OIL FORTUNES, chronicles the lives of the oil industry's four founders, known in their heyday as the Big Four--Roy Cullen, H.L. Hunt, Clint Murchison, and Sid Richardson.

Burrough, who grew up in Waco and now lives in the New York City area, will tell how he tracked the Big Four from modest backgrounds to create Texas Oil, one of the great economic and political powerhouses of the 20th Century.  Their imprints live on in today's Texas and the volatile global energy business.

His new book THE BIG RICH was published early in 2009 by the Penguin Group.