November 978-0-00-727654-7 £20.00 HB 234x153mm 448pp Rights: Home, Commonwealth, not Canada, Exclusive European, Serial Export edition: 978-0-00-732942-7 TPB £12.99 October
Tom Bower has a distinguished reputation as an investigative historian, broadcaster and journalist, and is the author of several ground-breaking books about tycoons. His most recent works are Conrad and Lady Black and Gordon Brown. His books about the Nazis include Blood Money and the definitive biography of Klaus Barbie. Among his other muchdebated biographies are those of Mohammed Fayed, Richard Branson and Robert Maxwell.
The Squeeze Oil, Money and Greed in the 21st Century
Tom Bower Over the last 20 years, oil prices have soared from $7 a barrel to $147 and back down to $37. Amid economic boom and bust, speculators, traders, politicians and monarchs have plotted to earn fortunes from oil, and prayed for salvation from unpredictable natural and man-made disasters. Behind the headlines are the crushing rivalries between men and women exploring for oil five miles beneath the sea, battling for control of the world’s biggest corporations and gambling billions of dollars twenty-four hours every day on oil prices. Success or failure for all those extraordinary personalities depends on squeezing their rivals and squeezing the crude out of the rocks. Overweening vanity and greed absorb those titans whose ambitions are forging the world’s quest for oil. Exploiting unprecedented close access to the lives of irrepressible traders in New York, oil-oligarchs in Moscow, corporate chieftains in Dallas and London, and wily politicians floating in jets across the globe, Tom Bower presents the untold story of the most important quandary of our times: why, if there is plentiful oil in the earth, does mankind face a dire shortage threatening our lives? Self-interest is propelling the squeeze and there seems to be no salvation.
Harper Press Non-fiction
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