Small Town, Big Oil

The Untold Story of the Women Who Took on the Richest Man in the World - and Won

By: David W. Moore

Narrated by: Rebecca Gibel

Never underestimate the underdog.

In the fall of 1973, the Greek oil shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, husband of President John F. Kennedy's widow, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and arguably the richest man in the world, proposed to build an oil refinery on the narrow New Hampshire coast, in the town of Durham. At the time, it would have cost $600 million to build and was expected to generate 400,000 barrels of oil per day, making it the largest oil refinery in the world. The project was vigorously supported by the governor, Meldrim Thomson, and by William Loeb, the notorious publisher of the only statewide newspaper, the Manchester Union Leader.

But three women vehemently opposed the project - Nancy Sandberg, the town leader who founded and headed Save Our Shores; Dudley Dudley, the freshman state rep who took the fight to the state legislature; and Phyllis Bennett, the publisher of the local newspaper that alerted the public to Onassis's secret acquisition of the land. Small Town, Big Oil is the story of how the residents of Durham, led by these three women, out-organized, out-witted, and out-maneuvered the governor, the media, and the Onassis cartel to hand the powerful Greek billionaire the most humiliating defeat of his business career, and spare the New Hampshire seacoast from becoming an industrial wasteland.

©2018 David W. Moore (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

#teamworkmakesthedreamwork

3 women defeated big business in local NH. excellent story and a great listen. enjoy

Fantastic win for the little guy!

I grew up in Durham and recognized many names and events. My parents were anti-refinery and volunteers in SOS. It was well researched.

I was disappointed that the narrator didn’t check on the pronunciation of Plaistow and more importantly, the word Piscataqua, which was horribly mispronounced each of the 30 or so times the word came up in the text.

What a difference people can make in politics

The book was riveting and shows how people can make a difference in politics.

Anyone who wants to make a change in politics at the city and state level should read this book, especially at your local level of politics.

Terrible narration!

This is a marvelous story of the successful battle against big oil destroying a local ecosystem but the narration is deplorable. It surely seems like a computer voice with awful inflections, mispronounced names and places and just a drone. Please tell me this is a computer generated narration and not the actual reading of the individual.

Don't listen if you've ever lived in New England!!

The narration on this book is appalling. The narrator didn't bother to learn to pronounce any of the local words critical to the story. it is annoying and disrespectful. I could hardly get through the story.