Recommendation: Oil on the Brain

While I slog through the next book in the series, you might want to check out Lisa Margonelli’s Oil on the Brain: Petroleum’s Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank. It follows gas from the gas station to South America. It’s a fascinating, funny and sometimes depressing look at where we get our oil. I couldn’t help by think of it yesterday when I read reports about Big Oil’s day in front of congress. If you wanted to cut your oil consumption before, you’ll really want to do it after reading this book.

From my St. Pete Times review:

“In Chad, for example, where Exxon has invested $3.7 billion in oil development, children do their homework by sitting outside Exxon’s security lights at night because they have no electricity. More than $300 billion in oil has been pulled from Nigeria, but some villages have no schools, no hospitals. Well, the buildings are there – Shell built them, but didn’t provide the people to make the buildings functional. Without staff or teachers, the school and the hospital are shut down and crumbling. It’s no wonder some Venezuelans call oil ‘the devil’s excrement.'”

Read more at www.oilonthebrain.com.