Explosive fuel for the raging debate on oil prices.
“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 1904 book 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.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-143450-1
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2008
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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