Embargo

The 1970s history that explains the 2020s world: Embargo tells the thrilling inside story of the world's first great energy crisis, and how it remade the world economy.

'Jaw-dropping' RORY STEWART, author of Politics on the Edge
'A masterpiece' SEBASTIAN MALLABY, author of The Power Law
'A thriller' BRADLEY HOPE, co-author of Billion Dollar Whale
'Extraordinary' LYSE DOUCET, author of The Finest Hotel in Kabul
'A must-read' JAVIER BLAS, co-author of The World for Sale
'A ripping yarn' RANA FOROOHAR, author of Sea Change
'Totally absorbing' JAMES BARR, author of A Line in the Sand
'A rollicking read' SCOTT ANDERSON, author of King of Kings
'Essential reading' ED CONWAY, author of Material World

***

We have been here before.

The king of Saudi Arabia had warned the Americans repeatedly: if you do not treat us with respect, we will cut off your oil. For years, nobody believed him. In October 1973, he made good on his threat.

The consequences were immediate. As energy shortages and blackouts spread through Western capitals, the world's most powerful economies discovered that their prosperity rested on decisions being made in Riyadh.

Embargo is the gripping inside story of the 1973 oil crisis and the small group of leaders who shaped it. It is the story of Faisal, the Saudi King who was born a nomad and became the richest man in the world. Of Ahmed Zaki Yamani, his unflappable Harvard-educated oil minister who drove American oil executives to tears with his steely calm. And of Henry Kissinger, the US statesman who failed to grasp how much leverage the Middle East had acquired over the West until it was too late.

Filled with frantic diplomacy and secret negotiations, Embargo follows the race to avert economic catastrophe and restore the flow of oil. In the process, it uncovers a turning point in modern history: the moment the industrialised world discovered how vulnerable its prosperity was to turmoil in the Middle East.

More than fifty years later, we are still wrangling with the consequences.

***

'Philip Delves Broughton has turned the birth of the modern petro-state into a thriller . . . Embargo is the book that explains how the world we live in was actually made.' BRADLEY HOPE, co-author of Billion Dollar Whale

'Both an illuminating account of the 1973 oil crisis and an extraordinary echo of the current one.' LYSE DOUCET, author of The Finest Hotel in Kabul

'A must-read to understand not just the 1973 oil crisis, but every energy shock that has followed since.' JAVIER BLAS, co-author of The World for Sale

'A fascinating education into how the global oil industry really works - and a rollicking good time.' SCOTT ANDERSON, author of King of Kings

'Marvellous . . . Even if we weren't once again wrestling with oil crises, I would have enthusiastically recommended Embargo. Since we are, this is essential reading.' ED CONWAY, author of Material World