Wheel of Fortune

Wheel of Fortune
Author: Thane Gustafson
Publisher: Belknap Press
Total Pages: 673
Release: 2012-11-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674066472

A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year on Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Republics The Russian oil industry—which vies with Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest producer and exporter of oil, providing nearly 12 percent of the global supply—is facing mounting problems that could send shock waves through the Russian economy and worldwide. Wheel of Fortune provides an authoritative account of this vital industry from the last years of communism to its uncertain future. Tracking the interdependence among Russia’s oil industry, politics, and economy, Thane Gustafson shows how the stakes extend beyond international energy security to include the potential threat of a destabilized Russia. “Few have studied the Russian oil and gas industry longer or with a broader political perspective than Gustafson. The result is this superb book, which is not merely a fascinating, subtle history of the industry since the Soviet Union’s collapse but also the single most revealing work on Russian politics and economics published in the last several years.” —Robert Legvold, Foreign Affairs “The history of Russia’s oil industry since the collapse of communism is the history of the country itself. There can be few better guides to this terrain than Thane Gustafson.” —Neil Buckley, Financial Times

Oil, Power, and War

Oil, Power, and War
Author: Matthieu Auzanneau
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Total Pages: 674
Release: 2020-02-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1603589783

The story of oil is one of hubris, fortune, betrayal, and destruction. It is the story of a resource that has been undeniably central to the creation of our modern culture, and ever-present during the darkest exploits of empire the world over. For the past 150 years, oil has become the most essential ingredient for economic, military, and political power. And it has brought us to our present moment in which political leaders and the fossil-fuel industry consider extraordinary, and extraordinarily dangerous, policy on a world stage marked by shifting power bases. Upending the conventional wisdom by crafting a “people’s history,” award-winning journalist Matthieu Auzanneau deftly traces how oil became a national and then global addiction, outlines the enormous consequences of that addiction, sheds new light on major historical and contemporary figures, and raises new questions about stories we thought we knew well: What really sparked the oil crises in the 1970s, the shift away from the gold standard at Bretton Woods, or even the financial crash of 2008? How has oil shaped the events that have defined our times: two world wars, the Cold War, the Great Depression, ongoing wars in the Middle East, the advent of neoliberalism, and the Great Recession, among them? With brutal clarity, Oil, Power, and War exposes the heavy hand oil has had in all of our lives—and illustrates how much heavier that hand could get during the increasingly desperate race to control the last of the world’s easily and cheaply extractable reserves.

Oil & War

Oil & War
Author: Robert Goralski
Publisher: William Morrow
Total Pages: 392
Release: 1987
Genre: History
ISBN:

The full story of the role that oil played in the origins and outcome of World War II.

Blood of the Earth

Blood of the Earth
Author: Dilip Hiro
Publisher: Politico's Publishing
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2008-01
Genre: Energy policy
ISBN: 9781842751954

Changing the geopolitics of oil, China and India are expanding their navies as they become dependent on lines of oil tankers from the Middle East, posing the beginning of a challenge to American hegemony in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. The shortage of oil sets the stage for the coming oil wars of the 21st century.

Oil & Honor

Oil & Honor
Author: Thomas Petzinger
Publisher: Beard Books
Total Pages: 508
Release: 1999
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781893122079

The Prize

The Prize
Author: Daniel Yergin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 1094
Release: 2012-09-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1471104753

The Prize recounts the panoramic history of oil -- and the struggle for wealth power that has always surrounded oil. This struggle has shaken the world economy, dictated the outcome of wars, and transformed the destiny of men and nations. The Prize is as much a history of the twentieth century as of the oil industry itself. The canvas of this history is enormous -- from the drilling of the first well in Pennsylvania through two great world wars to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and Operation Desert Storm. The cast extends from wildcatters and rogues to oil tycoons, and from Winston Churchill and Ibn Saud to George Bush and Saddam Hussein. The definitive work on the subject of oil and a major contribution to understanding our century, The Prize is a book of extraordinary breadth, riveting excitement -- and great importance.

Blood and Oil

Blood and Oil
Author: Michael T. Klare
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2007-04-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1429900571

From the author of Resource Wars, a landmark assessment of the critical role of petroleum in America's actions abroad In his pathbreaking Resource Wars, world security expert Michael T. Klare alerted us to the role of resources in conflicts in the post-Cold War world. Now, in Blood and Oil, he concentrates on a single precious commodity, petroleum, while issuing a warning to the United States-its most powerful, and most dependent, global consumer. Since September 11th and the commencement of the "war on terror," the world's attention has been focused on the relationship between U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and the oceans of crude oil that lie beneath the region's soil. Klare traces oil's impact on international affairs since World War II, revealing its influence on the Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, and Carter doctrines. He shows how America's own wells are drying up as our demand increases; by 2010, the United States will need to import 60 percent of its oil. And since most of this supply will have to come from chronically unstable, often violently anti-American zones-the Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea, Latin America, and Africa-our dependency is bound to lead to recurrent military involvement. With clarity and urgency, Blood and Oil delineates the United States' predicament and cautions that it is time to change our energy policies, before we spend the next decades paying for oil with blood.

The Battle of Bretton Woods

The Battle of Bretton Woods
Author: Benn Steil
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 480
Release: 2013-02-24
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0691149097

Recounts the events of the Bretton Woods accords, presents portaits of the two men at the center of the drama, and reveals Harry White's admiration for Soviet economic planning and communications with intelligence officers.

The Battle of Carthage

The Battle of Carthage
Author: Hinze, David C.
Publisher: Pelican Publishing
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2010-09-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781455600618

Fought by pro-Confederate Missouri State guardsmen and Union volunteers more than two weeks before First Bull Run, it was the culmination of the first major land campaign of the Civil War.

Law of the Jungle

Law of the Jungle
Author: Paul M. Barrett
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2015-09-22
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0770436366

The gripping story of one American lawyer’s obsessive crusade—waged at any cost—against Big Oil on behalf of the poor farmers and indigenous tribes of the Amazon rainforest. Steven Donziger, a self-styled social activist and Harvard educated lawyer, signed on to a budding class action lawsuit against multinational Texaco (which later merged with Chevron to become the third-largest corporation in America). The suit sought reparations for the Ecuadorian peasants and tribes people whose lives were affected by decades of oil production near their villages and fields. During twenty years of legal hostilities in federal courts in Manhattan and remote provincial tribunals in the Ecuadorian jungle, Donziger and Chevron’s lawyers followed fierce no-holds-barred rules. Donziger, a larger-than-life, loud-mouthed showman, proved himself a master orchestrator of the media, Hollywood, and public opinion. He cajoled and coerced Ecuadorian judges on the theory that his noble ends justified any means of persuasion. And in the end, he won an unlikely victory, a $19 billion judgment against Chevon--the biggest environmental damages award in history. But the company refused to surrender or compromise. Instead, Chevron targeted Donziger personally, and its counter-attack revealed damning evidence of his politicking and manipulation of evidence. Suddenly the verdict, and decades of Donziger’s single-minded pursuit of the case, began to unravel. Written with the texture and flair of the best narrative nonfiction, Law of the Jungle is an unputdownable story in which there are countless victims, a vast region of ruined rivers and polluted rainforest, but very few heroes.