Tyranny of Oil: The World's Most Powerful Industry--and What We Must Do to Stop It
Author: Antonia Juhasz
Who's really controlling those prices?
How much oil is left?
How far will Big Oil go to get it?
And at what cost to the environment, human rights, the economy, worker safety, public health, and democracy?
The answers aren't what you think. They're much worse. But there's also plenty that we can do about it.
As oil prices—and public outrage—skyrocket, Antonia Juhasz, a leading industry critic and expert on corporations and globalization, gives us the hardest-hitting exposй of the oil industry in decades. In The Tyranny of Oil she investigates the true state of the U.S. oil industry—uncovering its virtually unparalleled global power, influence over our elected officials, and lack of regulatory oversight, as well as the truth behind $150-a-barrel oil, $4.50-a-gallon gasoline, and the highest profit in corporate history. Exposing an industry that thrives on secrecy, Juhasz shows how Big Oil manages to hide its business dealings from policy makers, legislators, and, most of all, consumers. She reveals exactly how Big Oil gets what it wants—through money, influence, and lies.
The Tyranny of Oil offers both a new take on problems and a new set of solutions as Juhasz puts forward an immediate call to action—a formula for reining in the industry, its governmental lobbying power, environmental destruction, and violence while reducing global dependence on oil. Her thought-provoking answers to the most pressing energy questions speak directly to readers concerned about oil and gas prices, global warming, wars for oil, and America's place in the world. With the major players in the world's most powerful industry charged with collusion, price-gouging, anticompetitive behavior, and unabashed greed, Juhasz calls boldly for the breakup of Big Oil.
Drawing on considerable historical research, Juhasz explores the parallels between today's companies and Standard Oil, the most powerful corporation of the early twentieth century, whose stranglehold on the economy and government was broken only by the vision and persistence of activists and like-minded politicians. We are in a similar position today, she argues, with powerful opportunities available for ordinary Americans to come together, reclaim their voices, and shore up our nation's crumbling democratic foundation.
A tool for meaningful change that blends history, original investigative research and reporting, candid interviews with key insiders, and a unique focus on activism, The Tyranny of Oil is required reading for every concerned global citizen.
Publishers Weekly
Starred Review.
In this thorough, readable takedown of Big Oil, the most profitable industry in the world, Juhasz (The Bush Agenda) exposes the ways in which a half dozen oil companies have achieved control over American families and U.S. politics, triggering environmental and humanitarian catastrophes they have no intention of resolving. Within 10 years of Standard Oil's founding in 1870, John D. Rockefeller monopolized the refining, marketing and output of U.S. oil; ever since 1890's Sherman Antitrust Act split the company into small constituent parts, oil players have scrambled to evade regulation, regather into ever-greater corporations and regain the ability to set prices and control output. Debunking industry claims over recent oil price escalation, Juhasz exposes how Big Oil has used techniques like speculative futures markets and the "Enron Loophole"-along with massive operations opacity-to reap record profits year after year while growing their political influence; indeed, Juhasz locates the current "oiligarchy" making"the most pressing decisions of our time" from inside George W. Bush's White House, crafting policy and advocating war. Calling for a "Separation of Oil and State," this excellent, wide-ranging study of disastrous monopoly capitalism should shake up notions that major energy players are interested in any alternative to more oil, money and power.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Reviews
"Big Oil has turned our democracy into a farce," claims liberal activist and Institute for Policy Studies fellow Juhasz (The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time, 2006) in this timely, blistering critique of the world's most profitable industry.
Nearly a century after the 1911 breakup of Standard Oil Trust, notes the author, a reconstructed trust comprised of a handful of powerful oil companies formed through recent corporate mergers—more than 2,600 in the U.S. petroleum industry from the 1990s to 2004—now dominates much of the decision-making of the American government. During the eight years of the Bush administration, this "oiligarchy" of wealthy firms has spent billions of dollars on political contributions and lobbying to ensure that it is "coddled, subsidized, protected, and preserved by the U.S. government." Juhasz argues that oil companies have made possible, and directly participate in, the unregulated speculation in oil futures that has helped drive oil prices upward (at a time when available supplies in storage tanks exceed global demand). Despite their assertions to the contrary, they are not interested in green alternatives—most invest less than one percent of total capital expenditures on alternative energy—but only in finding more oil in places (tar sands, oil shale, oceans) where extraction will be costly and harmful to the environment. Further, says the author, their quest to control world oil reserves was one of the causes of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and for a massive ongoing realignment of the U.S. military, with bases and deployments following the world's oil supply and transportation routes. Inspired by muckraker Ida Tarbell's landmark 1904book The History of the Standard Oil Company, this white-hot polemic explores many of the industry's complex and secret practices, including zone pricing, which sets wholesale and company-owned gas-station prices according to geographic zones (and explains why gasoline prices can vary greatly among stations within a few blocks). Juhasz believes a growing populist movement will demand Congressional action to break up the current "spawn of Standard Oil: ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Marathon, Valero, Shell-U.S., and BP America."
Explosive fuel for the raging debate on oil prices.
Agent: Diana Finch/Diana Finch Literary Agency
Table of Contents:
1 Big Oil's Last Stand 1
2 The Birth and Breakup of Standard Oil 18
3 Big Oil Bounces Back: From the Breakup to the Near Reconvergence of Standard Oil 56
4 Driving the Price of Crude 126
5 Paying the Price: Consolidation, High Gas Prices, and Contempt 169
6 Lobbyists, Lawyers, and Elections: How Big Oil Kills Democracy 209
7 Big Oil's Big Plans for the Future, Part I: Environmental Destruction 273
8 Big Oil's Big Plans for the Future, Part II: Wars for Oil 319
9 Taking On Big Oil 370
Acknowledgments 399
Notes 401
Index 435
Book review: Food for the Greedy or The Whisky Barons
Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster
Author: Dana Thomas
Once luxury was available only to the rarefied and aristocratic world of old money and royalty. It offered a history of tradition, superior quality, and a pampered buying experience. Today, however, luxury is simply a product packaged and sold by multibillion-dollar global corporations focused on growth, visibility, brand awareness, advertising, and, above all, profits. Award-winning journalist Dana Thomas digs deep into the dark side of the luxury industry to uncover all the secrets that Prada, Gucci, and Burberry don't want us to know. Deluxe is an uncompromising look behind the glossy façade that will enthrall anyone interested in fashion, finance, or culture.
New York Post - Richard Johnson
If you have ever wondered why a woman absolutely needs to buy a $3,000 handbag, or why she might perish without a certain shade of lipstick, this book explains it all in empirical, evolutionary detail. Dana Thomas has brilliantly dissected the fashion phenomenon while the healthy beast still thrives luxuriously on the operating table. Deluxe might make some women pause before spending the rent money on their Manolo Blahniks.
Los Angeles Times
What Fast Food Nation did for food service, this book does for fashion, exposing the underbelly of the $157-billion luxury industry and the lockstep consumer psychology behind its glamorous veneer.
The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani
A crisp, witty social history that's as entertaining as it is informative.
Newsweek - Fareed Zakaria
Globalization, capitalization, class, and culture . . . A fascinating book.
The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani
With Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster, Ms. Thomas—who has been the cultural and fashion writer for Newsweek in Paris for 12 years—has written a crisp, witty social history that's as entertaining as it is informative. Traveling from French perfume laboratories to Las Vegas shopping malls to assembly-line factories in China, she traces the evolving face of the luxury goods business, from design through marketing to showroom sales.
The New York Times Book Review - Caroline Weber
In Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster, Thomas investigates the business of designer clothing, leather goods and cosmetics, and finds it wanting. Hijacked, over the past two or three decades, by corporate profiteers with a "single-minded focus on profitability," the luxury industry has "sacrificed its integrity, undermined its products, tarnished its history and hoodwinked its consumers."…Thomas's message is relevant to shoppers of every stripe. Whether upscale or middle-market, paying in cash or buying on credit, today's customer is barraged at every turn with the logos that…mean pure, corporate gold. Deluxe performs a valuable service by reminding us that these labels don't mean much else. Once guarantors of value and integrity, they are now markers that point toward nothing, guiding the consumer on a road to nowhere.
Publishers Weekly
Newsweekreporter Thomas skillfully narrates European fashion houses' evolution from exclusive ateliers to marketing juggernauts. Telling the story through characters like the French mogul Bernard Arnault, she details how the perfection of old-time manufacturing, still seen in Hermès handbags, has bowed to sweatshops and wild profits on mediocre merchandise. After a brisk history of luxury, Thomas shows why handbags and perfume are as susceptible to globalization and corporate greed as less rarefied industries. She follows the overarching story, parts of which are familiar, from boardrooms to street markets that unload millions in counterfeit goods, dropping irresistible details like a Japanese monk obsessed with Comme des Garçons. But she's no killjoy. If anything, she's fond of the aristocratic past, snarks at "behemoths that churn out perfume like Kraft makes cheese" and is too credulous of fashionistas' towering egos. Despite her grasp of business machinations, her argument that conglomerates have stolen luxury's soul doesn't entirely wash. As her tales of quotidian vs. ultra luxury make clear, the rich and chic can still distinguish themselves, even when Las Vegas hosts the world's ritziest brands. Thomas might have delved deeper into why fashion labels inspire such mania, beyond "selling dreams," but her curiosity is contagious. (Aug.)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business InformationCaroline Geck - Library Journal
As cultural and fashion editor for Newsweekin Paris, Thomas is well positioned to provide an in-depth business history of the luxury goods industry, including its modern evolution. Owing to corporate greed, globalization, and excessive brand licensing across diverse product lines, small family-run ateliers that furnished exclusive products to elite customers have all but disappeared along with the artistry, quality, and personalized service associated with these items. The only distinction between luxury and mass-marketed goods now may be the label, which itself drives the price. Despite the current profit-driven environment, Thomas recognizes that small new companies offering impeccable craftsmanship continually sprout up to serve select niches, yet how long these enterprises last before succumbing to the lure of great profits associated with mass production and consumerism is debatable. Besides being a fascinating read suitable for public libraries, this book is a valuable resource for special libraries collecting in the luxury goods and related industries for better understanding previous business and marketing strategies and their outcomes.
Kirkus Reviews
A scathing expose demystifies the luxury-goods industry, detailing how venerable fashion houses have traded quality for profits. There was a time, writes Paris-based cultural journalist Thomas, when only an elite few understood, appreciated and could afford to spend the money on one-of-a-kind luxuries. All that has changed, and not for the better. Now anyone can have piece of the magic for the right price. Over the last 25 years, traditional fashion houses like Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Prada have gone from being small, family-owned businesses that cared singularly about quality and prestige to being publicly traded global conglomerates whose attention is firmly fixed on the bottom line. The result is an industry that spends billions influencing our sartorial decisions, all the while undermining its products and losing most of what made it special. Each chapter focuses on elements of this history, starting with the ruthless corporate tactics of Bernard Arnault, president of Louis Vuitton parent company LVMH. In the author's view, Arnault embodies the distasteful notion that what a luxury good represents is more important than what it is-and what it represents is shaped by the aesthetically empty practices of marketing and advertising. The real profits in the luxury trade come not from clothes, but from accessories like perfume and handbags, covered in the book's middle chapters. Though rich in detail, these sections drag a bit, but the narrative pace picks up again in the last third. Expanding luxury goods to the mass market requires managing costs, Thomas points out, so many luxury goods are now made in China-and counterfeited there; fake handbags are a multi-billion dollar industry. Somereaders will take issue with the whiff of snobbery wafting from the text, as when the author declares that it's so obvious Donatella Versace came from nothing. One can tell, however, that Thomas is genuinely troubled by the facts she has unearthed about the debasing of products that were once genuinely unique. Painstakingly researched and deftly written, valuable to fashionistas and fashion victims alike. Agent: Tina Bennett/Janklow and Nesbit Associates, Inc.
What People Are Saying
Fareed Zakaria
The story of luxury goods today is really about globalization, capitalization, class and culture. Dana Thomas has a feel for all of this and more and has written a fascinating book. A luxury product about luxury.
Rose Apodaca
Through exhaustive reporting and personalized storytelling, Dana Thomas has delivered a historical survey of a business that truly keeps the world going round. She may never again be so readily welcomed in some quarters of this beau monde, but the trade off is an essential reference for any student of fashion, finance or culture. (Rose Apodaca, former west coast bureau chief, Women's Wear Daily )
Joel Achenbach
"Deluxe is delicious if you know about fashion; fascinating even if you don't. We're not just backstage at the runway show, we're all the way back in the factory, which might well be in a remote province of China. Dana Thomas is a fearless reporter who shows how so many designer goods have gone to hell in a handbag. This is a page-turning yarn about the men and women who have transformed luxury into an off-the-rack, global commodity."--(Joel Achenbach, Washington Post columnist and author of The Grand Idea)
Michael Isikoff
"Dana Thomas is a brilliant reporter with a sharp eye for detail. In Deluxe, she provides an illuminating account of how the multi billion dollar luxury industry and the corporate giants that dominate it prey on, and bamboozle, consumers in the United States and the rest of the world."--(Michael Isikoff, co-author of Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War)
Jay Alexander
"Miss J. says don't buy the shoes, buy the book. Perfect front row reading when the shows are late during fashion week. Deluxe is a luxury to read."--(Jay Alexander, America's Next Top Model)
