Blowout
Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth
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4.0 • 5 Ratings
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
**THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER**
A ground-breaking investigation into the oil and gas industry, international corruption and world politics.
Oil.
Corrupt? Yes.
Unimaginably lucrative? Of course.
But, the enemy of democracy?
Blowout is the oil and gas industry as we've never seen it before, as told by America's most incisive political journalist, Rachel Maddow. A blackly comic journey from Washington to Siberia, to deep within the earth's crust and the icy Arctic seas, it reveals not just the greed and incompetence of Big Oil and Gas but why the Russian government hacked the 2016 U.S. election.
This is our final wake-up call: to stop subsidizing oil and gas, to fight for transparency, and to check the influence of the world's most destructive industry before it destroys our democracy
'Each page in Blowout is a revelation into the depth of corruption and greed that is infused into the international economy' David Lammy, MP
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Petroleum-industry profits inexorably subvert good governance, argues this scattershot indictment of the oil and natural gas industries. Maddow (Drift), host of MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, surveys Big Oil's recent misdeeds, including Western oil companies' support for Equatorial Guinea's Obiang dictatorship, the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and blocking rules to regulate fracking practices that cause earthquake swarms and pollution in Oklahoma (while the same companies demand tax breaks). Anchoring the book is Russian president Vladimir Putin's cutthroat petropolitics. Maddow contends he turned Russia's oil and gas sectors into cesspools of corruption and inefficiency, seized well-managed private oil companies and arrested their CEOs, and made energy a foreign policy weapon while getting investments and technology from ExxonMobil. Maddow tells these stories in colorful, sardonic prose she pillories Putin's campaign "to piss in the punch bowl of free elections all over the civilized world" but the resulting hodgepodge doesn't always support her portrayal of oil and gas as a "singularly destructive industry" that "effectively owns" governments; her absorbing account of Putin's skullduggery is really about a vampiric government victimizing the oil industry (and includes an unconvincing link to Trump-Russia collusion theories). Maddow's absorbing but inconsistent expos demonizes more than it analyzes.)
Customer Reviews
Could have been so much better
Very interested in the book and topic but the author sadly missed the mark. Too much sensationalism, silly metaphors and a few questionable bending the facts detracts from what should be an important read. An objective view is needed here but the author starts from a decidedly strict conclusion and then builds a narrative to support that.
She also completely Ignores the reality of the energy trading markets dominated by private entities like Vitol and Trafigura, the world’s largest energy traders.
If you are a liberal looking for a republican/conservative bashing book on big oil, you will undoubtedly enjoy the read. However, if you are trying to get an objective view on perhaps one of the most incredibly important issues of our time, I fear you may finish the book hoping the author would have eschewed the sensationalism and focused on the facts, realities and solutions.