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Based on trips to New York, Houston, New Orleans, Paris, Geneva, and Phnom Penh, among other far-flung locales, The Secret World of Oil includes up-close portraits of Louisiana oilmen and their political handlers; an urbane, captivating London fixer; and an oil dictator's playboy son who had to choose among more than three dozen luxury vehicles before heading out to party in Los Angeles. Supported by funding from the prestigious Open Society Foundations, this is both an entertaining global travelogue and a major work of investigative reporting.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49535966019857,"sku":"GOR006861742","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50209301430545,"sku":"CIN1781688672G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50390740533521,"sku":"CIN1781688672A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51052293226769,"sku":"NIN9781781688670","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51320666849553,"sku":"NGR9781781688670","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51328572358929,"sku":"CIN1781688672VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51398147211537,"sku":"GOR008356002","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1781688672.jpg?v=1751312178"},{"product_id":"radioactive-boyscout-book-ken-silverstein-9781841152295","title":"The Radioactive Boyscout","description":"David Hahn, a boy scout, wanted to earn his science merit badge. 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His diligence and ultimate success triggered the Federal Radiological Emergency Response Plan: a team of men in moon suits who deconstructed the shed and loaded it and all its contents into steel drums emblazoned with radioactive warning signs. This is a true story. 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But the modern oil industry is an amazingly shady meeting ground of fixers, gangsters, dictators, competing governments, and multinational corporations, and until now, no book has set out to tell the story of this largely hidden world.  The global fleet of some 11,000 tankers-that's tripled during the past decade-moves approximately 2 billion metric tons of oil annually. And every stage of the route, from discovery to consumption, is tainted by corruption and violence, even if little of that is visible to the public.  Based on trips to New York, Washington, Houston, London, Paris, Geneva, Phnom Penh, Dakar, Lagos, Baku, and Moscow, among other far-flung locals, The Secret World of Oil includes up-close portraits of a shadowy Baku-based trader; a high-flying London fixer; and an oil dictator's playboy son who has to choose one of his eleven luxury vehicles when he heads out to party in Los Angeles. 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In these pages we encounter Ernst Werner Glatt, a right-wing German who was for many years the Pentagon's preferred gun-runner; ex-Secretary of State Alexander Haig who now lobbies for China and assists in selling weapons to Turkey; and Frank Gaffney, an ex-Pentagon official who has grown rich by promoting the biggest boondoggle of them all, Star Wars. Today's private warriors have a direct financial interest in war and the connections to push for the maintenance of bloated military budgets.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49599931810065,"sku":"GOR003925098","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53004820283665,"sku":"CIN1859843255VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1859843255.jpg?v=1751448860"},{"product_id":"private-warriors-book-ken-silverstein-9781859847565","title":"Private Warriors","description":"In offering explanations for the US's enormous post-Cold War military budget-nearly $280 billion for the year 2000-most defense critics point to the influence of weapon makers pork-barrel politics. Those are certainly factors. 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