How and why did the promise of oil fail Galicia and the Austrian Empire, which at the beginning of the 20th century ranked third among the world's oil-producing states? Alison Frank traces the interaction of technology, nationalist rhetoric, social tensions, provincial politics, and entrepreneurial vision in shaping the Galician oil industry.

“ExxonMobil has met its match in Coll, an elegant writer and dogged reporter . . . extraordinary . . . monumental.” —The Washington Post “Fascinating . . . Private Empire is a book meticulously prepared as if for trial . . . a compelling and elucidatory work.” —Bloomberg From the Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling author of Ghost Wars and The Achilles Trap, an extraordinary exposé of Big Oil. Includes a profile of current Secretary of State and former chairman and chief executive of ExxonMobil, Rex Tillerson In this, the first hard-hitting examination of ExxonMobil—the largest and most powerful private corporation in the United States—Steve Coll reveals the true extent of its power. Private Empire pulls back the curtain, tracking the corporation’s recent history and its central role on the world stage, beginning with the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989 and leading to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The action spans the globe—featuring kidnapping cases, civil wars, and high-stakes struggles at the Kremlin—and the narrative is driven by larger-than-life characters, including corporate legend Lee “Iron Ass” Raymond, ExxonMobil’s chief executive until 2005, and current chairman and chief executive Rex Tillerson, President-elect Donald Trump's nomination for Secretary of State. A penetrating, news-breaking study, Private Empire is a defining portrait of Big Oil in American politics and foreign policy.

How U.S. intervention is reshaping the world.

A fascinating story of how palm oil has shaped our world

We might think that the world's oil empires are invincible megaliths, dominated by American interests, but Duncan Clarke reveals the ways in which these empires will face huge challenges in the twenty-first century. Based on razor-sharp analysis of contemporary geopolitics and a deep knowledge of global history, he shows exactly why these empires are declining. He explains where the new empires of oil will be around the world; which of the hidden threats and unknown enemies are and will be the most serious; and where companies have gone wrong and can improve their global strategies. Empires of Oil reveals how the world will change because of global battles over the commodity that underpins our lives.

The Nazis' quest for oil as a cornerstone of their imperial mission

In 1951 prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh seized British oil holdings in Iran. The move set in motion four years of bitter political and strategic battles between a United Kingdom desperate for an economic rebound and an increasingly anti-Western regime in Teheran. The Eisenhower administration tried to broker a settlement, but Mossadegh was overthrown by an Anglo-American operation and replaced by the Shah. In this book, Mary Ann Heiss provides a detailed account of this turning point in cold war history. Drawing on a range of British and American documents, she provides an incisive political, economic, and cultural analysis of the first British and American effort to contain communism and radical Third World nationalism; the first American effort to bolster a crumbling British Empire; and the first effort by the CIA to overthrow a popular nationalist regime. This book is the full story not only of the shift from British to American dominance in the oil economies of the Middle East but also of the rise of nationalism in the context of the cold war.

In Oil Money, David M. Wight offers a new framework for understanding the course of Middle East–US relations during the 1970s and 1980s: the transformation of the US global empire by Middle East petrodollars. During these two decades, American, Arab, and Iranian elites reconstituted the primary role of the Middle East within the global system of US power from a supplier of cheap crude oil to a source of abundant petrodollars, the revenues earned from the export of oil. In the 1970s, the United States and allied monarchies, including the House of Pahlavi in Iran and the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia, utilized petrodollars to undertake myriad joint initiatives for mutual economic and geopolitical benefit. These petrodollar projects were often unprecedented in scope and included multibillion-dollar development projects, arms sales, purchases of US Treasury securities, and funds for the mujahedin in Afghanistan. Although petrodollar ties often augmented the power of the United States and its Middle East allies, Wight argues they also fostered economic disruptions and state-sponsored violence that drove many Americans, Arabs, and Iranians to resist Middle East–US interdependence, most dramatically during the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Deftly integrating diplomatic, transnational, economic, and cultural analysis, Wight utilizes extensive declassified records from the Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations, the IMF, the World Bank, Saddam Hussein's regime, and private collections to make plain the political economy of US power. Oil Money is an expansive yet judicious investigation of the wide-ranging and contradictory effects of petrodollars on Middle East–US relations and the geopolitics of globalization.

Marcus Samuel Jr. is an unorthodox Jewish merchant trader. Henri Deterding is a take-no-prisoners oilman. In 1889, John D. Rockefeller is at the peak of his power. Having annihilated all competition and dominating the oil market, even the US government is wary of challenging Standard Oil. The Standard never loses - that is until Samuel and Deterding team up to form Royal Dutch Shell. A riveting account of ambition, oil and greed, Breaking Rockefeller traces Samuel and Deterding's rise to the top of the oil industry, and the collapse of Rockefeller's monopoly.