Private Empire : ExxonMobil and American Power

English

ISBN: 1594203350

EAN: 9781594203350

Category: Social Science / Sociology / General/Business & Economics / Corporate & Business History/Business & Economics / General/Technology & Engineering / Petroleum/Political Science / International Relations / General/

Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated

Release Date: 05/01/2012

Age Range: 18-null

Synopsis: Winner of the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award 2012 An extraordinary and monumental exposé of Big Oil from two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Steve Coll( The Washington Post) In Private EmpireSteve Coll investigates the largest and most powerful private corporation in the United States, revealing the true extent of its power. ExxonMobils annual revenues are larger than the economic activity in the great majority of countries. In many of the countries where it conducts business, ExxonMobils sway over politics and security is greater than that of the United States embassy. In Washington, ExxonMobil spends more money lobbying Congress and the White House than almost any other corporation. Yet despite its outsized influence, it is a black box. Private Empirepulls back the curtain, tracking the corporations recent history and its central role on the world stage, beginning with the Exxon Valdezaccident in 1989 and leading to the Deepwater Horizonoil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The action spans the globe, moving from Moscow, to impoverished African capitals, Indonesia, and elsewhere in heart-stopping scenes that feature kidnapping cases, civil wars, and high-stakes struggles at the Kremlin. At home, Coll goes inside ExxonMobils K Street office and corporation headquarters in Irving, Texas, where top executives in the God Pod (as employees call it) oversee an extraordinary corporate culture of discipline and secrecy. The narrative is driven by larger than life characters, including corporate legend Lee Iron Ass Raymond, ExxonMobils chief executive until 2005. A close friend of Dick Cheneys, Raymond was both the most successful and effective oil executive of his era and an unabashed skeptic about climate change and government regulation.. This position proved difficult to maintain in the face of new science and political change and Raymonds successor, current ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson, broke with Raymonds programs in an effort to reset ExxonMobils public image. The larger cast includes countless world leaders, plutocrats, dictators, guerrillas, and corporate scientists who are part of ExxonMobils colossal story. The first hard-hitting examination of ExxonMobil, Private Empireis the masterful result of Colls indefatigable reporting. He draws here on more than four hundred interviews; field reporting from the halls of Congress to the oil-laden swamps of the Niger ? more than one thousand pages of previously classified U.S. documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act; heretofore unexamined court records; and many other sources. A penetrating, newsbreaking study, Private Empireis a defining portrait of ExxonMobil and the place of Big Oil in American politics and foreign policy.

Awards: National Book Critics Circle Awards – null 

Private Empire : ExxonMobil and American Power

Illustrated: No

Format: Hardcover

Height: 1.45 inches

Width: 6.4 inches

Length: 9.55 inches

Weight: 35.91 oz

Pages: 704