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ExxonMobil and American Power
Penguin Press
May 2012
On Sale: May 1, 2012
704 pages
ISBN: 1594203350
EAN: 9781594203350
Kindle: B0064W5BPM
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction
In Private Empire Steve Coll investigates the largest
and most powerful private corporation in the United States,
revealing the true extent of its power. ExxonMobil’s annual
revenues are larger than the economic activity in the great
majority of countries. In many of the countries where it
conducts business, ExxonMobil’s 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 Empire pulls back the curtain, tracking the
corporation’s recent history and its central role on the
world stage, beginning with the Exxon Valdez accident
in 1989 and leading to the Deepwater Horizon oil
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
ExxonMobil’s 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,
ExxonMobil’s chief executive until 2005. A close friend of
Dick Cheney’s, 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 Raymond’s successor,
current ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson, broke with
Raymond’s programs in an effort to reset ExxonMobil’s public
image. The larger cast includes countless world leaders,
plutocrats, dictators, guerrillas, and corporate scientists
who are part of ExxonMobil’s colossal story. The first hard-hitting examination of ExxonMobil, Private
Empire is the masterful result of Coll’s 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 Delta; 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 Empire is a
defining portrait of ExxonMobil and the place of Big Oil in
American politics and foreign policy.
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