This is the story of how a female journalist brought down the world's greatest tycoon and broke up the Standard Oil monopoly.Before the rise of mega-corporations like Microsoft, Standard Oil controlled the oil industry. Undaunted by the ruthless power of its owner, John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937), a fearless and ambitious reporter, Ida Tarbell (1857-1944), confronted the company known as 'The Trust'. Through her fact gathering and devastating prose, Tarbell, a reporter at "McClure's Magazine", pioneered the practice of investigative journalism. Her discoveries about Standard Oil and Rockefeller led to a dramatic confrontation that culminated in the landmark 1911 Supreme Court antitrust decision which altered the landscape of American industry forever. Based on extensive research, "Taking on the Trust" is a dramatic history of the Progressive Era with powerful resonance for the first decades of the twenty-first century.