Crude: The Story of Oil

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Description

The story of the black gold that ellipsed King Coal as the world's number one resource - oil. Oil decisively won the Great War, propelled the West from the Industrial Revolution to the Plastic Age and has figured prominently in the power politics of the latter 20th and early 21st centuries. Shah elegantly weaves together the science, economics, politics and social history of the substance.

Reviews

"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 "Riveting... an informative, startling and necessary work." - 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"

Author Bio

Sonia Shah edited both the critically acclaimed Dragon Ladies: Asian and American Feminists Breathe Fire and Between Fear and Hope: A Decade of Activism. A former editor at South End Press and Nuclear Times Magazine, Shah is an independent journalist whose writing has appeared in The Nation, Playboy, and The Ecologist among other publications.