The oil industry provides the lifeblood of modern civilization, and bestselling books have been written about the industry and even individual companies in it, like ExxonMobil. But the modern oil industry is an amazingly shady meeting ground of fixers, gangsters, dictators, competing governments, and multinational corporations, and until now, no book has set out to tell the story of this largely hidden world.
The global fleet of some 11,000 tankers-that's tripled during the past decade-moves approximately 2 billion metric tons of oil annually. And every stage of the route, from discovery to consumption, is tainted by corruption and violence, even if little of that is visible to the public.
Based on trips to New York, Washington, Houston, London, Paris, Geneva, Phnom Penh, Dakar, Lagos, Baku, and Moscow, among other far-flung locals, The Secret World of Oil includes up-close portraits of a shadowy Baku-based trader; a high-flying London fixer; and an oil dictator's playboy son who has to choose one of his eleven luxury vehicles when he heads out to party in Los Angeles. Supported by funding from the prestigious Open Society, this is both an entertaining global travelogue and a major work of investigative reporting.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
An engaging journey through the sector's murkiest crevices, shot through with ill-concealed disgust at the corruption at its heart. * Financial Times * Crude oil covers crude business practices. In this investigation journalist Ken Silverstein swims through this murky moral world. * New Statesman * An astounding story ... [Silverstein] has a novelist's eye for meaningful detail and a historian's touch for context. * The San Diego Union-Tribune, in praise of The Radioactive Boy Scout * Enthralling ... [The Radioactive Boy Scout] has the quirky pleasures of a Don DeLillo novel or an Errol Morris documentary ... An engaging portrait of a person whose life on America's fringe also says something about mainstream America. * Minneapolis Star Tribune, in praise of The Radioactive Boy Scout *
Sprache
Verlagsort
Zielgruppe
Produkt-Hinweis
Fadenheftung
Gewebe-Einband
Maße
Höhe: 216 mm
Breite: 144 mm
Dicke: 30 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-1-78168-137-4 (9781781681374)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Ken Silverstein is a fellow of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. He was a 2010-2012 Open Society Fellow. He served as Washington editor of Harper's magazine from 2006 to 2010. Previously on the staff of the Los Angeles Times, Silverstein has also written for Mother Jones, Wallpaper, Washington Monthly, the Nation, Slate, Salon, and many other publications. In 2005, he received the Overseas Press Club Award for a series, co-written with T. Christian Miller, titled "The Politics of Petroleum" and published in the Los Angeles Times.
