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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. ExxonMobilβs annual revenues are larger than the economic activity in the great majority of countries. In many of the countries where it conducts business, ExxonMobilβs 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 corporationβs 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 ExxonMobilβs K Street office and corporation headquarters in Irving, Texas, where top executives in the βGod Podβ (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 βIron Assβ Raymond, ExxonMobilβs chief executive until 2005. A close friend of Dick Cheneyβs, 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 Raymondβs successor, current ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson, broke with Raymondβs programs in an effort to reset ExxonMobilβs public image. The larger cast includes countless world leaders, plutocrats, dictators, guerrillas, and corporate scientists who are part of ExxonMobilβs colossal story. The first hard-hitting examination of ExxonMobil, Private Empire is the masterful result of Collβs 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.
 Media BuzzRachael Madow - March 17, 2014
CBS This Morning - June 28, 2012
Colbert Report - June 14, 2012
Charlie Rose - May 2, 2012
Marketplace - PRI - May 1, 2012
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