Over the course of 100 years, the prestigious Hotel du Pont has welcomed future and former presidents, first ladies, world leaders, Nobel Prize recipients, royalty, music maestros, sports legends, and stars of stage and screen--earning its reputation as the premier hotel in the state of Delaware. The Green Room, one of the most elegant hotel dining rooms in the country, features traditional French cuisine. The Gold Ballroom and other ornate European-inspired rooms provide luxurious venues for public and private events. A nationally recognized art collection showcasing original paintings by Andrew Wyeth adorns the Christina Room's walls. A state-of-the-art conference center and a 1,250-seat theater add to amenities that make the Hotel du Pont a first-choice destination for business and social events. Often labeled the front door of DuPont, the hotel is strategically located in the company's world headquarters.
Award-winning journalist Gerard Colby takes readers behind the scenes of one of America’s most powerful and enduring corporations; now with a new introduction by the author Their name is everywhere. America’s wealthiest industrial family by far and a vast financial power, the Du Ponts, from their mansions in northern Delaware’s “Chateau Country,” have long been leaders in the relentless drive to turn the United States into a plutocracy. The Du Pont story in this country began in 1800. Éleuthère Irénée du Pont, official keeper of the gunpowder of corrupt King Louis XVI, fled from revolutionary France to America. Two years later he founded the gunpowder company that called itself “America’s armorer”—and that President Wilson’s secretary of war called a “species of outlaws” for war profiteering. Du Pont Dynasty introduces many colorful characters, including “General” Henry du Pont, who profited from the Civil War to build the Gunpowder Trust, one of the first corporate monopolies; Alfred I. du Pont, betrayed by his cousins and pushed out of the organization, landing in social exile as the powerful “Count of Florida”; the three brothers who expanded Du Pont’s control to General Motors, fought autoworkers’ right to unionize, and then launched a family tradition of waging campaigns to destroy FDR’s New Deal regulatory reforms; Governor Pete du Pont, who ran for president and backed Newt Gingrich’s 1994 Republican Revolution; and Irving S. Shapiro, the architect of Du Pont’s ongoing campaign to undermine effective environmental regulation. From plans to force President Roosevelt from office, to munitions sales to warlords and the rising Nazis, to Freon’s damage to the planet’s life-protecting ozone layer, to the manufacture of deadly gases and the covered-up poisoning of Du Pont workers, to the reputation the company earned for being the worst polluter of America’s air and water, the Du Pont reign has been dappled with scandal for centuries. Culled from years of painstaking research and interviews, this fully documented book unfolds like a novel. Laying bare the bitter feuds, power plays, smokescreens, and careless unaccountability that erupted in murder, Colby pulls back the curtain on a dynasty whose formidable influence continues to this day. Suppressed in myriad ways and the subject of the author’s landmark federal lawsuit, Du Pont Dynasty is an essential history of the United States.
A Delaware Album, 1900-1930 contains over 300 postcard photographs from the entire state taken during the period from 1900 to 1930. Arranged by subjects—City and Town Views; Delaware Beaches; Amusements; Industry and Agriculture; Signs of the Times; Trains, Trolleys, and Automobiles; Water Transportation; Schools; Religion; Businesses; Hotels and Motels—each photo has a caption ranging from a sentence or two to several paragraphs. The book's introduction detail how the cards were produced, analyzes the subject matter depicted on the cards, documents the history of several of the most prominent local photographers in the state whose work is found almost only on postcards, and traces the evolution and popularization of postcard photography.
A deeply reported exploration of Joe Biden as told through his extended family. Coming off of the 2020 election, THE BIDENS tells the Biden Family story in full, from the secrets lurking in the deep recesses of Joe's family tree to his son Hunter's foreign deal-making spree—and the Trump gang's ham-handed efforts to exploit it. On November 3, Americans did not just elect Joe Biden: They got a package deal. The tight-knit Biden family—siblings, children, in-laws, and beyond—is coming right along with him. They are sure to play a defining role in his presidency, just as they have in every other one of his endeavors. Inside, you’ll find these and other stories and revelations about the Biden family, including: Joe’s childhood, the stunning 1972 Senate upset engineered by his sister Valerie, and the car accident that took the lives of his first wife and infant daughter soon after Joe’s early years in the Senate and his role in the creation of the cozy “Delaware Way” of conducting politics The Biden brothers’ business escapades, including the ’70s rock club rivalry that pitted Jim Biden against Jill’s first husband and ended in a banking scandal The Delaware lawman who oversaw an FBI investigation into Joe’s 2007 campaign fundraising and now has Hunter in his sights Hunter’s surprisingly close friendship with his Fox News antagonist, Tucker Carlson What Steve Bannon really hoped to accomplish by giving the contents of “the Laptop from Hell” to the New York Post New evidence that sheds light on the authenticity of Hunter’s alleged computer files Like the Kennedys before them, the Bidens are a tight-knit, idealistic Irish Catholic clan with good looks, dynastic ambitions, and serious personal problems. As THE BIDENS reveals, the best way to understand Joe Biden—his values, fears, and motives—is to understand his family: Their Irish (and not-so-Irish) roots, their place in the Delaware pecking order, their dodgy business deals, and their personal struggles and triumphs alike.
Today, consumer credit, employee stock options, and citizen investment in the stock market are taken for granted--fundamental facts of American economic life. But few people realize that they were first widely promoted by John Jakob Raskob (1879-1950), the innovative financier and self-made businessman who built the Empire State building, made millions for DuPont and General Motors, and helped shape the contours of modern capitalism. David Farber's Everybody Ought to Be Rich is the first biography of Raskob, a man who shunned the limelight (he was the anti-Trump of his time) but whose impact on free market enterprise can hardly be overstated. A colorful figure, Raskob's life evokes the roaring twenties, the Catholic elite, the boardrooms of America's biggest corporations, and the rags-to-riches tale that is central to the American dream. Farber follows Raskob's remarkable trajectory from a teenage candy seller on the railway between Lockport and Buffalo to the pinnacles of wealth and power. With no formal education but possessed of a boundless energy and an unshakeable faith in individual initiative (his motto was "Go ahead and do something!"), Raskob partnered with great industrialists and financiers, buying up companies, leveraging investments, reorganizing corporations, funneling money into the political system, and creating new pools of credit for rich investors and middle class consumers alike--practices commonplace today but revolutionary at the time. His most famous innovation was mass consumer credit, which he offered to individual car buyers, enabling working and middle-class Americans to purchase GM's more expensive cars. Raskob desperately wanted to bridge class divides and to share the wealth American corporations were fast creating--so that everyone could be rich. Chronicling Raskob's short-comings as well as his successes, Everybody Ought to Be Rich illuminates a crucial but little-known figure in American capitalism whose influence can still be felt today.
Activist investors have sent shockwaves through corporations in recent years, personally targeting directors and executives at some of the world’s largest companies. No longer satisfied with operating on the fringes of business, they are now a firm fixture in the boardroom. Up to a quarter of public companies could be targeted by activist campaigns in the coming years, with directors and executives at those corporations threatened with losing their jobs. The trend, which began in corporate America, has spread to the UK, Europe and Asia, taking in several high profile companies. Barbarians in the Boardroom tells a compelling story of boardroom bust ups, dumped CEOs triumphant activists and pared back companies. It reveals real-life examples and interviews with executives and investors to explain why and how activist investors have managed to storm Wall Street and tear down City citadels. Owen Walker provides an insight into the way activists think, how they decide to target a company and how directors and executives could possibly work with them rather than against them. The full text downloaded to your computer With eBooks you can: search for key concepts, words and phrases make highlights and notes as you study share your notes with friends eBooks are downloaded to your computer and accessible either offline through the Bookshelf (available as a free download), available online and also via the iPad and Android apps. Upon purchase, you'll gain instant access to this eBook. Time limit The eBooks products do not have an expiry date. You will continue to access your digital ebook products whilst you have your Bookshelf installed.
An account of Delaware's experience of educational modernization led by Pierre S. du Pont, from a local-based collection of school districts to a coherent state system that by the 1930s ranked near the top in the nation.
