Fueling Victory at Home: How the Mallet Ranch of Texas and Its Relationship With the Oil Industry Helped Reshape the American Southwest in the 1940s

**********WINNER: 2020 Best Indie Book Award--Nonfiction-U. S. History category*********From the author who brought you books on Frank Isett and W. P. Soash comes Fueling Victory at Home.As we prepare to mark the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II and the 125th anniversary of the founding of the Mallet Ranch of Texas, perhaps no other topic in the world today elicits more controversy on both sides than oil. Certainly, as we look at the situation in Iran and Saudi Arabia (as of 2019), the question must be asked: How did we get to this point?In this book, I explore the dealings between oil companies and the Mallet Ranch of Texas. With limited exceptions, the book covers the 1940s. One might wonder: Why should the average person care about a ranch that lay to the southwest of Lubbock, roughly halfway between Fort Worth and Albuquerque? Then, as now, oil played a significant role in Mideast drilling rights. Then, as now, Texas drove American oil production. Then, as now, successful oil exploration--or lack thereof--benefited agriculture in ways that rains could not.In short: When government tightened restrictions on wartime resource consumption (e.g., oil, paper), oil and agriculture did not operate as effectively.