Blowout

In 2010, Oklahomans began hearing a new phrase, "earthquake swarm." That same year, a lot of Michael Jackson memorabilia, including his crystal-studded white glove, sold at auction for more than a million dollars to a man who was officially only the forestry minister of tiny Equatorial Guinea. Four years later, Ukrainian revolutionaries stormed the palace of their ousted president and found peacocks, gilded toilets, and a floating restaurant built like a Spanish galleon. Rachel Maddow argues that these oddities share a common root, and Blowout traces it back to the enormously profitable and deeply corrupting oil and gas industry.

The book winds its way around the world with Maddow's dark humor, exposing the greed and ineptness of the industry's biggest names. Chevron and BP appear, but the spotlight falls hardest on ExxonMobil and its seemingly mild-mannered chief, Rex Tillerson. Maddow also offers an unexpected explanation for why the Russian government hacked the 2016 U.S. election. In her telling, Russia's vast petroleum wealth has held back its development, leaving Vladimir Putin to hold onto power by exporting Russia's dysfunction to rivals, neighbors, Western alliances, and the United States.

Maddow charges that oil and gas have undermined democracies rich and poor, polluted oceans and rivers, and kept brutal autocrats in power. Still, she says, raging at the industry makes about as much sense as being indignant when a lion eats a gazelle, since it is only acting on its nature.

What she wants instead is for the lion to be contained. Blowout calls for an end to subsidies for some of the richest companies on earth, for real transparency, and for limits on the influence of the industry and those who help it. Maddow puts the stakes bluntly: democracy either wins this fight or disappears.