"Riveting . . . exemplifies how business works by exploiting personal connections."--Businessweek

The Bechtel Group is a private company that shuns the limelight, yet it is one of the prime movers-and-shakers in the global economic arena. Founded by self-made millionaire Warren A. Bechtel as a risk-taking construction and engineering firm, the multibillion-dollar, multinational conglomerate is responsible for constructing the Hoover Dam, laying the Alaskan oil pipeline, and building half of the world's nuclear power plants, for starters.

But Bechtel did not...