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BOOK
The King of Oil: The Secret Lives of Marc Rich
Daniel Ammann
$11.97

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BOOK
The Coconut Oil Miracle (Previously published as The Healing Miracle of Coconut Oil)
Jon J. Kabara
$8.36

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Use nature's elixir to lose weight, prevent heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, and beautify skin and hair.

Can saturated fat be good for you?

Natural coconut oil-not the hydrogenated version often found in processed foods-is a saturated fat, but not the kind your doctor has warned you about. Studies have shown that this uniquely curative oil actually has innumerable health benefits ranging from disease prevention to anti-aging. Now, in his revised edition of the first book to describe the therapeutic properties of coconut oil, Bruce Fife offers a nutrition plan with dozens of tasty recipes that will allow anyone to experience the healing miracles of what he deems the "perfect food."

When taken as a supplement, used in cooking, or applied to directly to the skin, coconut oil has been found to:

- Promote weight loss
- Help protect against heart disease, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, and many other degenerative diseases
- Strengthen the immune system
- Improve digestion
- Prevent premature aging of the skin

BOOK
Essential Oils Desk Reference
$39.96

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This is a wonderful book filled with pertinent information. A must have for every "oiler" out there. THANK YOU!

BOOK
The Complete Book of Essential Oils and Aromatherapy: Over 600 Natural, Non-Toxic and Fragrant Recipes to Create Health - Beauty - a Safe Home Environment
Valerie Ann Worwood
$9.50

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Essential oils are one of the world's great untapped resources. This complete volume explains how to incorporate these ancient medicines of the earth into everyday life for personal care, physical and mental health, and a safe home environment. It gives more than 500 recipes using essential oils as alternatives to often toxic human-made health, beauty, and cleaning products.

BOOK
Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil
Peter Maass
$13.42

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A Q&A with Peter Maass

Question: What initially got you interested in the story of oil?

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)

BOOK
Oil 101
Morgan Downey
$31.45

About this product:
OIL 101 is a straightforward guide to oil and an essential read for anyone coming to grips with where oil prices, the economy and society are headed.

In OIL 101, Downey provides the facts one needs to understand oil, from its history and chemistry, to refining, finished products, storage, transportation, alternatives, and how prices are determined every day in global wholesale oil markets and how those markets are connected to prices at the pump.

BOOK
Healing Oils Of The Bible
David Stewart
$12.21

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Considered cure-alls by Biblical people, healing by prayer and anointment with oils as practiced by Jesus' disciples and early Christians is made practical for us today in this book. Based on both science and scripture.

BOOK
The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes
Bryan Burrough
$38.95

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In The Big Rich, bestselling author and Vanity Fair special correspondent Bryan Burrough chronicles the rise and fall of one of the great economic and political powerhouses of the twentieth century—Texas oil. By weaving together the epic sagas of the industry’s four greatest fortunes, Burrough has produced an enthralling tale of money, family, and power in the American century.

Known in their day as the Big Four, Roy Cullen, H. L. Hunt, Clint Murchison, and Sid Richardson were all from modest backgrounds, and all became patriarchs of the wealthiest oil families in Texas. As a class they came to be known as the Big Rich, and together they created a new legend in America—the swaggering Texas oilman who owns private islands, sprawling ranches and perhaps a football team or two, and mingles with presidents and Hollywood stars.

The truth more than lives up to the myth. Along with their peers, the Big Four shifted wealth and power in America away from the East Coast, sending three of their state’s native sons to the White House and largely bankrolling the rise of modern conservatism in America. H. L. Hunt became America’s richest man by grabbing Texas’s largest oilfield out from under the nose of the man who found it; he was also a lifelong bigamist. Clint Murchison entertained British royalty on his Mexican hacienda and bet on racehorses—and conducted dirty deals—with J. Edgar Hoover. Roy Cullen, an elementary school dropout, used his millions to revive the hapless Texas GOP. And Sid Richardson, the Big Four’s fun-loving bachelor, was a friend of several presidents, including, most fatefully, Lyndon Johnson.

The Big Four produced offspring who frequently made more headlines, and in some cases more millions, than they did. With few exceptions, however, their fortunes came to an end in a swirl of bitter family feuds, scandals, and bankruptcies, and by the late 1980s, the era of the Big Rich was over. But as Texas native Bryan Burrough reveals in this hugely entertaining account, the profound economic, political, and cultural influence of Texas oil is still keenly felt today.

BOOK
Snake Oil Science: The Truth About Complementary and Alternative Medicine
R. Barker Bausell Ph.D.
$10.79

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Hailed in the New York Times as "entertaining and immensely educational," Snake Oil Science is not only a brilliant critique of alternative medicine, but also a first-rate introduction to interpreting scientific research of any sort. The book's ultimate goal is to illustrate how the placebo effect conspires to make medical therapies appear to be effective--not just to consumers, but to therapists and poorly trained scientists as well. Bausell explores this remarkable phenomenon and explains why research on any therapy that does not factor in the placebo effect (and other placebo-like effects) will inevitably produce false results. Moreover, as the author shows in an impressive survey of research from high-quality scientific journals, studies employing credible placebo controls do not indicate positive effects for alternative therapies beyond those attributable to random chance. Readers will come away from this book with a healthy skepticism of claims about the latest "miracle cure," be it St. John's Wort for depression or acupuncture for chronic pain.

BOOK
The Encyclopedia of Oil Painting Techniques: A Unique Step-by-Step Visual Directory of All the Key Oil-Painting Techniques, Plus an Inspirational Gallery Showing How They Can Be Put into Practice
Jeremy Galton
$10.87

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