Dark Side of Fortune: Triumph and Scandal in the Life of Oil Tycoon Edward L. Doheny Book

The material here is fertile soil, the inspiration for Daniel Day Lewis's Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood, the time periods covered -- from the birth of America as a superpower to the Great Depression -- is fertile for storytelling, and yet this book falls flat. And the reason for its disappointment is pretty straightforward: Davis is a poor biographer, completely unable to spool together an interesting narrative. She is only interested in providing a string of mundane detail from start to finish -- the length of mustaches, cufflinks worn, dinner menus -- and doesn't know how to mold the clay she's mined. That's a shame.