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Crude World: The Violent Twilight Of Oil (2009)

by Peter Maass(Favorite Author)

3.74 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1400041694 (ISBN13: 9781400041695)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Knopf

review 1: Not really a great book - as others have said, sort of reads like a long magazine article. No heavy hitting analysis, though the author does manage to get interviews with some key players in the oil industry. The main point of this book is: oil is a dirty and corrupt business. While some of the examples of how disturbing it is are memorable, for the most part, this is a book that tells you things you already know.
review 2: The author exposes the staggering destruction oil has wrought in countries less well-known as energy suppliers. The author recounts how the greed of Western oil companies, governments and consumers have propped up such vicious and corrupt dictatorships as that in Nigeria. Nigeria has earned more than $400bn from oil, yet, as Maass grimly not... morees, nine out of 10 Nigerians live on less than $2 a day and one in five children dies before its fifth birthday. Some 80% of Nigeria's oil wealth goes to 1% of its population (on World Bank figures). It is, frankly, stolen as it trickles through the system, from ministers to bureaucrats to policemen scratching their palms. And, because this is Nigeria, not some tiny, fly-blown state, because the land teems with young men without schooling or jobs, all this leads to big troubles and, sometimes, big headlines. Reported from countries ranging from Russia to Equatorial Guinea, Maass's heartfelt and beautifully crafted book reveals how one of oil's darkly magical properties is that it erases inconvenient memories. less

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