The Tyranny of Oil: The World's Most Powerful Industry--And What We Must Do to Stop It

by Antonia Juhasz

Book Overview

"Juhasz bravely and expertly exposes the inner workings of an industry and a government riddled with secrets, lies, and deception."
--Daniel Ellsberg, author of Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers

In the tradition of the Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Antonia Juhasz's The Tyranny of Oil offers a chilling expos? of the modern American oil industry and its dire abuse of power. A leading...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061434515
• ISBN13: 9780061434518
• Release Date: December 2009
• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Length: 480 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 7.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

First Check: 2 Secrets of Tyranny

Juhasz has written the sequel to The History of the Standard Oil Company: Briefer Version, revealing the depth to which Big Oil has corrupted America's political process and rightly supports Separation of Oil and State (SOS). But in spite of two areas it falls short: (1) She's very sympathetic to OPEC, and (2) quite unsympathetic to climate-change environmentalists. Juhasz reports on how Saudi Arabia, Iran etc. took back their oil from our Big Oil. Even without the horrendous CIA interventions, that would be justified. But then she calls it a "harsh attitude of some Americans" when Time quotes them saying "The basic solution is that the OPEC cartel must be broken." Those Americans were not opposing the Saudis taking back their own oil--that's not what OPEC did. That quote was from July 1979, when the OPEC cartel was bragging about it's power and those "harsh Americans" where facing proportionally higher prices than we faced in 2008. Big Saudi Oil is no nicer than Big American Oil, and it's a whole lot bigger. In fact as Juhasz points out repeatedly, every time OPEC makes a killing so does Big Oil, and every times OPEC goes down, so does Big Oil. This is no coincidence, and it's the reason Big Oil loves and protects OPEC. Americans who don't like OPEC also don't like Big Oil -- they're on our side. As for the climate folks, she takes their main policy, cap and trade, and trashes it. I agree, it bribes the polluters, and hurts the poor, and I don't like it one bit. But I know this area well, and have never read such an unfair and confused attack. And she never mentions the alternative climate policies that are better. She leave no room for a Kyoto type agreement. To do something about Big Oil, we need focus Obama's carbon policies on oil. Read Carbonomics: How to Fix the Climate and Charge It to OPEC. It's about how to build a coalition between the two strongest forces in America that hate Big Oil. What Carbonomics understands, but Juhasz misses, is that the problem is Global Oil. All the big national oil companies that she white washes are in on this too -- Russia, Iran, Arabia, all of them.

Kept Me Up late at night - Reading!

What an engrossing book. I have now bought 3 of them and given them to my grown children to read. This book captured me from the first chapter and held my interest through to the end. Most nights I would lie in bed reading until 1-2 AM and reluctantly turn off the light, only to toss and turn unable to fall asleep because I couldn't turn off my mind to what I was reading in this book. Ms. Juhasz has done an excellent job of educating the reader on the very beginning of the oil industry and bringing us through to the power of oil today. I found all the details of oil power to be disgusting but not surprising. I wish this book could be required reading for every high school and college student. We really need a wake-up call and this book is it. I highly recommend reading this book if you care about what is going on with climate change, political corruption and wars.

It's time to bring the truth into the open

Antonia Juhasz's "Tyranny of Oil" is a well-written, scholarly work that is fully documented with footnotes supporting every factual statement. Her history of the oil industry is meticulous and revealing. People like Bojan Garic who dismiss this work with personal venom, like "this is the Worst Oil Book I have ever read" only reveal how desparate they are to marginalize someone like Juhasz who speak truth to power. Reviews like Garic's are to be expected when someone like Juhasz draws blood. Other reviewers, like Steve LeVine of the Washington Post have also been dispatched to spread the word that no intelligent, thoughtful person should read this book because it is so factually flawed that its theme can't be taken seriously. But Juhasz's case can't be ignored. It is factually documented where it can be, and it is tight, well-constructed and compelling where the evidence is only circumstantial. What else can one do in the absence of DNA, fingerprints or inculpatory tapes or e-mails? Juhasz readily admits that she has no smoking gun regarding the roll of Big Oil in America's debacle in Iraq, but she, neverhteless, says what needs to be said. She tells us what the 850 lb gorilla in the room is up to. Garic and LeVine, on the other hand, try to throw up a smoke screen arguing that the Gorilla isn't there because we don't have enough DNA for a 100% match. Ignore them. Everyone should read this book.

Great read, important book

This is the right book for our times; from Exxon's record- breaking profits in a time of global recession to America's involvement in wars clearly being fought for cheap oil, this is the book that ties it all together. I have to admit, I also found it compulsively readable!