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 BOOKCrude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil Peter Maass $34.95
About this product: Peter Maass: Much of my writing life involved wars, and oil was often mentioned. "It’s all about oil," I was told. Or, "It’s not about oil at all." Oil is central to our world, but what role does it play in violent conflicts and the divide between rich and poor? My initial work began before 9/11 and when I searched Amazon.com for books on oil, the proffered list included more tomes on salad dressing and aromatherapy than on the liquid that was the oxygen of the global economy. Some excellent books had been published, of course, but mainly for academic or expert readers. I had found my subject--a book that would explain in compelling ways what we do for oil and what oil does to us. Question: What surprised you most as you were reporting the story? Peter Maass: My subject wouldn’t speak to me! Okay, that’s a joke. But seriously, oil, as the topic of a book, defied the norms of interrogation. It doesn’t have a voice, body, army or dogma of its own. How do you coax secrets from a liquid? I had to travel around the world and talk to all sorts of people--oilmen, warlords, politicians, economists, geologists, environmentalists, sheikhs, lobbyists, and roughnecks (that’s a partial list). The subjects we discussed ranged from history to law, corruption, engineering, culture, psychology, and justice (another partial list). I was prepared for complexity, but the reality I encountered was a multi-dimensional web of facts, ideas and guesses. I was journeying through an intellectual as much as a physical world. Question: What's the most underreported story related to oil that you came across in your research? Peter Maass: You know the cliché, "The devil is in the details?" With oil, the devil is in the generalities. There have been lots of studies on what oil does in country x or country y, or how financial speculators might drive up the price of oil, or how company z bribed a foreign official, but connecting the dots and seeing the system at work--that’s the under-reported story. Of course there is much that’s still not known--for instance, have we reached a peak in global output?--but my greatest problem was too much data. Putting the available pieces together, and trying to present it in a way that people will pay attention to--that’s particularly hard and hasn’t been done enough. Question: There's an essential conflict here, which J. Bryan Williams highlights in your interview with him: "What are oil companies supposed to do? We don't create these places. Do we only develop oil in London or Paris? If so, we'll all be out there walking and stepping over piles of manure." Is oil production inevitably cursed, or is there a happy medium to be found where extraordinary pollution and/or human rights violations aren't at hand? Peter Maass: It will be hard to turn oil into a blessing for every dysfunctional country that has it, but the downsides can be reduced. Transparency is key--publishing contracts and payments so that it is harder for corrupt officials to steal. Several movements are afoot to do this--one is called the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, which is government-led, and the other is Publish What You Pay, which is non-governmental and backs mandatory disclosures rather than voluntary ones. It’s also important to track revenues once they’re in the system--are oil funds spent on military goods and phony contracts that enrich a president’s cousin? Watchdog groups are beginning to do this in some countries. These things will help, but let’s be honest--corruption is an ancient vice, and the fostering of good governance is an uphill endeavor in any country, whether it exports oil or peanuts. But we need to establish a baseline of sorts--utter kleptocrats and beyond-the-pale dictators should be opposed rather than tolerated for the oil they control. Question: What do you see as the most necessary change that needs to be made to begin to curtail the strife that is associated with oil production? Peter Maass: We need to curtail our appetite for oil. We already know that the burning of fossil fuels harms the atmosphere. We need to understand--and I hope my book provides some help on this--that our dependence on oil has warped countries that provide us with the substance. If we become less reliant on oil--which means becoming more conservation-minded and efficient, as well as developing renewable energy on a broader scale than is already underway--we will not feel a need to go to war for oil’s sake, or to support a dictator for oil’s sake. And if prices go down because the stuff is no longer so valuable to its consumers, perhaps the countries that have been harmed by oil will begin to recover. For all of us, consumers and suppliers, it will be a long and painful process. But it can be done. (Photo © Erinn Hartman)  BOOKCrude Chronicles: Indigenous Politics, Multinational Oil, and Neoliberalism in Ecuador (American Encounters/Global Interactions) Suzana Sawyer $18.00
About this product: Through her rich ethnography of indigenous marches, demonstrations, occupations, and negotiations, Sawyer tracks the growing sophistication of indigenous politics as Indians subverted, re-deployed, and, at times, capitulated to the dictates and desires of a transnational neoliberal logic. At the same time, she follows the multiple maneuvers and discourses that the multinational corporation and the Ecuadorian state used to circumscribe and contain indigenous opposition. Ultimately, Sawyer reveals that indigenous struggles over land and oil operations in Ecuador were as much about reconfiguring national and transnational inequality—that is, rupturing the silence around racial injustice, exacting spaces of accountability, and rewriting narratives of national belonging—as they were about the material use and extraction of rain-forest resources.  BOOKCrude: The Story of Oil Sonia Shah $6.37
About this product: “Shah...has written a book that couldn’t be more relevant.” —USA Today “Required reading for all who care about the future of this country and the planet as a whole.”— The Nation “This is not a Michael Moore-style anti-corporate rant—Shah writes beautifully, with dispassionate, elegant clarity—and it is all the more powerful for it.”— The Guardian (UK) “Shah has that crisp writing style and that knack for deploying statistics judiciously, rather than maniacally…most rewarding.”—The Age (Melbourne, Australia) “Riveting...[Crude] is an informative, startling, and necessary book.”—Roy Morrison, author of Ecological Democracy “The facts and figures of the world’s most important energy resource come alive…[Shah] helps us understand the energy subsidy oil gives our society, how our economy is dependent on it, and what the real ramifications are of turning the key in the ignition.”—Julian Darley, author of High Noon for Natural Gas Now newly revised and updated, Crude is the story of the black gold that eclipsed King Coal, decisively won the Great War, and propelled the West from the Industrial Revolution to the Plastic Age. Sonia Shah elegantly weaves together the science, economics, politics, and social history of oil in her inimitable telling. A former editor at South End Press and Nuclear Times magazine, Sonia Shah is an independent journalist whose writing has appeared in The Nation, Playboy, The Ecologist, Orion, and Salon.  BOOKSleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude Robert Baer $22.00
About this product:
Baer spent 21 years with the CIA, much of it in the Middle East, so he is an informed guide to this complex subject. His alarming book deserves to be read for raising many important and troubling questions. --Shawn Carkonen  BOOKBrewed, Crude and Tattooed (Maggy Thorsen) Sandra Balzo $10.84
About this product: The new ‘Maggy Thorsen’ coffee-house mystery - Maggy Thorsen, co-owner of coffee-house Uncommon Grounds, is trapped in a shopping mall by a snow storm, which cuts the electricity and phone lines. She finds the body of Way Benson, the owner of the mall.Maggy's discovery unearths other refugees of the storm and more than one of these people has a motive for killing the arrogant Way. Then there is another murder . . .  BOOKCrude Democracy: Natural Resource Wealth and Political Regimes (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics) Thad Dunning $22.04
About this product:  BOOKCrude Black Molasses: The Natural Wonder Food Cyril Scott $1.08
About this product:  BOOKCrude Awakenings: Global Oil Security and American Foreign Policy Steve A. Yetiv $10.24
About this product: Conventional wisdom on oil is wrong. So says the author, Steve A. Yetiv, Professor of Political Science at Old Dominion University: "The real story of global oil over the past twenty-five years is not about short run developments with Yukos, Venezuala or Nigeria, nor terrorist attacks on U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. It is not even about periodic small- and large-scale U.S. attacks on Iraq. Rather, the real story is about longer-term developments that have changed the international relations of the Middle East, politics at the global level, and world oil markets. These developments have increased oil stability." Although prices continue to remain volatile, Yetiv argues that the world market in petroleum products is far more benign and predictable than what is portrayed to us by the media and lawmakers, a fact that has serious implications for our current domestic and foreign policy decisions.  BOOKCrude Reflections / Cruda Realidad: Oil, Ruin and Resistance in the Amazon Rainforest (English and Spanish Edition) Kayana Szymczak $14.08
About this product: Crude Reflections chronicles the human and environmental impact of oil drilling in the Ecuadorian Amazon, where the pollution is so extensive that medical experts currently predict thousands of deaths from cancer and the disappearance of five indigenous rainforest communities. Photographers Lou Dematteis and Kayana Szymczak have documented the physical and emotional reality of those affected by this toxic contamination, roughly thirty times greater than the more widely reported Exxon Valdez oil spill. Their powerful images are accompanied by moving first-person testimonies from the victims, and the uplifting story of efforts by local communities to seek justice and to prevent further drilling.  BOOKCrude Power: Politics and the Oil Market (Library of International Relations) Oystein Noreng $25.69
About this product: In the current political climate of the Middle East and Central Asia, with anti-Americanism and the threat of terrorism in such countries as Saudi Arabia running high, oil will impact the world economy as well as thousands of lives in the future. This is an indispensable book for anyone concerned with the fate of the world today, especially the interplay of power and money in the Middle East and beyond. |
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