Oil

Here is an essential guide to the stuff that fuels virtually our every move and spills into global economics, international politics, human rights, and the health of the planet. Matthew Yeomans starts the book with an attempt to spend a day without oil-only to stumble before exiting the bath-room (petroleum products play a role in shampoo, shaving cream, deodorant, and contact lenses). Soon Yeomans is ranging across continents, surveying the history of oil exploration, and breaking down the science and economics of the oil industry-as well as the crude politics of the Bush administration and the Iraq war. Oil is the user's manual for the most important product on earth. Book jacket.