Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.42 reviews Ron Chernow Vintage, 2004 An unbiased look + Great insights into the man: It's J.D.'s world, we only live in it + Unbelievably detailed and comprehensive + AMERICAN MIDAS             Genie Out of the Bottle: World Oil since 19701 review M. A. Adelman The MIT Press, 1995 The Genie out of the Bottle The book was purchased for background information on oil price movements and their effects on the economy for a graduate level business course. The book was helpful in providing background on energy policy and how OPEC came to gain a large measure of control over world oil supplies and as a ...             All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror134 reviews Stephen Kinzer Wiley, 2008 Thrilling Read, Highly Important History. + A must read to understand the middle east + Sometimes the truth has a liberal bias + A Moving Read + Iranian blowback             Arabian Sands (Penguin Classics)35 reviews Wilfred Thesiger Penguin Classics, 2008 Thesiger's Arabian Sands + The Arab Mind + A well of information, but none too deep. I had heard this was the definitive work on the desert country but never had gotten around to reading it. I now have and it is terrific - every thing it's cracked up to be. I had read Michael Asher's biography; I had been in Ethiopia, Oman and Yemen; I traveled in the Hadhramaut -- all of this ...             The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It41 reviews Paul Collier Oxford University Press, 2007 Excellent Book Should Be Read By Everyone Concerned with Poverty + Will stimulate your thinking + Bottom Billion- They can be helped! + Very Interesting             Energy and Security: Toward a New Foreign Policy Strategy (Woodrow Wilson Center Press)6 reviews The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005 Sensible and comprehensive + A well documented discussion + Energy and Security: Toward a New Foreign Policy Strategy (Woodrow Wilson Center Press) + Energy is Security             Oil Wars Pluto Press, 2007 What part does oil play in war? It's easy to conclude that Western intervention in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan is primarily motivated by the West's desire to control precious oil resources. Is this also true of other conflicts around the world? The contributors argue that there is an essential problem in the way that recent "oil wars" have been conducted. When a country's ...             ZOOM: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future17 reviews Vijay Vaitheeswaran, Iain Carson Twelve, 2007 Zooms at the end Vijay's "Power to the people" was a pioneering work in highlighting the various issues including geo-political tensions, pollution, and the immediate need to find an alternate substitute for oil (My 5 star rating for this book on [...]). Since then, in direct correlation with and also perhaps in ...             Oil, God, and Gold: The Story of Aramco and the Saudi Kings9 reviews Anthony Cave Brown Houghton Mifflin, 1999 Are you one of 'em A-rab stiffs? + Narration flows right along + A flowing story of intrigue in the Gulf This is a fascinating story. A real page turner. I enjoyed it tremendously. It is true the editing is rather sloppy but the crisp writing style and the great story more than overcome it.             Oil on the Brain: Petroleum's Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank Lisa Margonelli Broadway, 2008 Oil on the Brain is a smart, surprisingly funny account of the oil industry—the people, economies, and pipelines that bring us petroleum, brilliantly illuminating a world we encounter every day. Americans buy ten thousand gallons of gasoline a second, without giving it much of a thought. Where does all this gas come from? Lisa Margonelli’s desire to learn took her on a one-hundred ...             Oil and Politics in the Gulf: Rulers and Merchants in Kuwait and Qatar (Cambridge Middle East Library) Jill Crystal Cambridge University Press, 1995 Why in recent years have the social and economic upheavals in Kuwait and Qatar been accompanied by a remarkable political continuity? In a region of revolution and coups, these particular monarchies have somehow survived. In her analysis of political change in the Gulf, Jill Crystal investigates this apparent anomaly by examining the impact of oil on the formation and destruction of political ...             Power to the People: How the Coming Energy Revolution Will Transform an Industry, Change Our Lives, and Maybe ...25 reviews Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005 Something to look forward to + Excellent writing from one point of view I almost didn't read this because of the title. In this day and age with many seemingly on the edge of reason I thought it was somewhat of an incendiary title. I'm glad I did check it out - I loved it. This man is a seriously talented writer. The material is dense. Very dense. Lots of ...             Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy92 reviews Matthew R. Simmons Wiley, 2006 The Definitive Book of Peak Oil + Saudi Oil Shock + Long but worth it Twilight in the Desert is widely accepted to be the best-written, best-researched, and most-informed book about peak oil and Saudi Arabia as an oil-exporter. Matthew Simmons is the foremost authority on peak oil and even the commodity in general. Whenever there is an article about this subject in ...             The Prize : The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power133 reviews Daniel Yergin Free Press, 1993 An Essential Tool For Understanding the Petroleum Industry + Incomparable + Best History of the Oil Industry + great content but poor product + Oil on My Brain             Oil Titans: National Oil Companies in the Middle East3 reviews Valerie Marcel, John V. Mitchell Brookings Institution Press, 2006 Sophistical look inside Middle East oil companies + Very Informative! + A rare find for the National Oil Companies! Don't look now, but five nationally owned oil companies (NOCs) control more than half the world's reserves of oil and natural gas. In today's media-steeped culture you might expect those companies to be under a constant microscope, but actually their operations tend to be cloaked in bureaucratic ...             Arabia Without Sultans Fred Halliday Saqi Books, 2001 Fred Halliday deconstructs the romantic mythology that shrouds the deserts of the Arabian peninsula. He looks at how old myths have been replaced by new ones, such as how the Sheikh of Arabia squeezes the powerless Western oil consumer. Halliday's presentation of the political and social life of the Arabian peninsula is situated in the global context of Western postcolonial strategy and the ...             The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States (Studies in International Political Economy , No 26)5 reviews Terry Lynn Karl University of California Press, 1997 very good book about what oil does to a country + Interesting contribution to theory + very good book about what oil does to a country Basically, this book is a very strong and appealing summary of the consequences of over-reliance on oil production for developing countries. Not only results, but also underlying causes are considered: most attention is given to institutional and political aspects of what Lynn calls ...             Yamani: The Inside Story1 review Jeffrey Robinson Atlantic Monthly Pr, 1989 superb and higly readable shows thorough research and an in depth understanding of his subject, as well as of the economics of the world of oil at the time, which is clearly explained at different points             The Asian Energy Factor: Myths and Dilemmas of Energy, Security and the Pacific Future4 reviews Robert A. Manning Palgrave Macmillan, 2000 Energy Interdependence as an Integrative Force + How to think about energy in Asia + Paucities and Scarcities + Intriguing Analysis of an Emerging Geopolitical Concern             Managing the Oil Wealth: OPEC's Windfalls and Pitfalls Jahangir Amuzegar I. B. Tauris, 2001 Whatever happened to OPEC? This book unravels the puzzle that has confounded all the experts: why did countries with such major divergences in size, population, resources, economic structures, governmental systems, culture, and ethnicity all follow the same path to political and economic development, and with such wretched results? How did OPEC members benefit from their three trillion-dollar ...