Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power

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Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power

3.94 of 5 stars 3.94 · rating details · 494 ratings · 98 reviews

Winner of the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award 2012

An “extraordinary” and “monumental” exposé of Big Oil from two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Steve Coll (The Washington Post)

In Private Empire Steve Coll investigates the largest and most powerful private corporation in the United States, revealing the true extent of its power. ExxonMobil’s...more Winner of the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award 2012

An “extraordinary” and “monumental” exposé of Big Oil from two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Steve Coll (The Washington Post)

In Private Empire Steve Coll investigates the largest and most powerful private corporation in the United States, revealing the true extent of its power. ExxonMobil’s annual revenues are larger than the economic activity in the great majority of countries. In many of the countries where it conducts business, ExxonMobil’s sway over politics and security is greater than that of the United States embassy. In Washington, ExxonMobil spends more money lobbying Congress and the White House than almost any other corporation. Yet despite its outsized influence, it is a black box.

Private Empire pulls back the curtain, tracking the corporation’s recent history and its central role on the world stage, beginning with the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989 and leading to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The action spans the globe, moving from Moscow, to impoverished African capitals, Indonesia, and elsewhere in heart-stopping scenes that feature kidnapping cases, civil wars, and high-stakes struggles at the Kremlin. At home, Coll goes inside ExxonMobil’s K Street office and corporation headquarters in Irving, Texas, where top executives in the “God Pod” (as employees call it) oversee an extraordinary corporate culture of discipline and secrecy.

The narrative is driven by larger than life characters, including corporate legend Lee “Iron Ass” Raymond, ExxonMobil’s chief executive until 2005. A close friend of Dick Cheney’s, Raymond was both the most successful and effective oil executive of his era and an unabashed skeptic about climate change and government regulation.. This position proved difficult to maintain in the face of new science and political change and Raymond’s successor, current ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson, broke with Raymond’s programs in an effort to reset ExxonMobil’s public image. The larger cast includes countless world leaders, plutocrats, dictators, guerrillas, and corporate scientists who are part of ExxonMobil’s colossal story.

The first hard-hitting examination of ExxonMobil, Private Empire is the masterful result of Coll’s indefatigable reporting. He draws here on more than four hundred interviews; field reporting from the halls of Congress to the oil-laden swamps of the Niger Delta; more than one thousand pages of previously classified U.S. documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act; heretofore unexamined court records; and many other sources. A penetrating, newsbreaking study, Private Empire is a defining portrait of ExxonMobil and the place of Big Oil in American politics and foreign policy.(less)

Hardcover, 704 pages

Published May 1st 2012 by Penguin Press HC, The (first published January 1st 2012)

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Jan 15, 2013 Mikey B. rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is an indelible picture of the long-standing oil enterprise. Even though the style is understated, factual (and sometimes sardonic) we are given an up-close view, of what for all intents and purposes, is a most nefarious business. It’s not what they are doing, but the way they are doing it. Extracting oil is their primary activity – what happens to the environment and the people in the land they occupy is all secondary. Only recently – when Rex Tillerson took the helm of ExxonMobil in 2006...more This is an indelible picture of the long-standing oil enterprise. Even though the style is understated, factual (and sometimes sardonic) we are given an up-close view, of what for all intents and purposes, is a most nefarious business. It’s not what they are doing, but the way they are doing it. Extracting oil is their primary activity – what happens to the environment and the people in the land they occupy is all secondary. Only recently – when Rex Tillerson took the helm of ExxonMobil in 2006 did it begin to acknowledge that global warming and climate change were occurring. Prior, they were in full denial.

If you are going to take on ExxonMobil be thoroughly prepared – one scientist remarked, on a court case against ExxonMobil that at the end they had become “better scientists”.

The estimates of the reserves of both natural gas and oil have risen over the last few years – partially because of new discoveries and new technology. However the extraction processes are still in the development stages and getting to these reserves is becoming more and more environmentally invasive – leading to more global warming. ExxonMobil (as do the other major oil companies) have nicely documented procedures on how to deal with oil spills and other environmental calamities – but this is just paper – the actual resources (equipment such as planes, trucks...) to carry-out the cleanup of the catastrophe only partially exist. ExxonMobil devotes a significant portion of their environmental documentation on dealing with the media.

The saddest and most revealing parts of the book are how ExxonMobil inhabits impoverished countries. There are cogent chapters on ExxonMobil in Indonesia, Equatorial Guinea, Chad and Nigeria. The author demonstrates that in the African countries the quality of living has not improved (not so sure about Indonesia). While it may not be ExxonMobil role to manage the distribution of wealth in these societies – they themselves are profiting immensely from these ventures. One could argue that this is exploitation pure and simple. After all, if one goes into a country and makes a ton of money should you not give something in return? Shouldn’t you ensure that it is just not a small group of the country’s leaders (family members) who keep the wealth?

This book is a powerful and searing depiction of a multinational. We are given a narrative of their leaders (Lee Raymond and Rex Tillerson) plus many other people and companys’. The author is somewhat dismissive of the electric car and how it would impact the oil and car manufacturing industry. This would lead to a substantial decrease in fuel consumption and thus slow down global warming. Why is it that industrialized Europe uses less fuel consumption per capita that North America?

At the end of this book we know that ExxonMobil is very successful at its’ core business and does it very well. But there is a large moral quandary to it all.

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Nov 28, 2012 Breakingviews rated it 3 of 5 stars

Review by Christopher Swann

Exxon Mobil shareholders may feel a warm glow when reading Steve Coll’s history of their firm. “Private Empire” reveals the company’s single-minded devotion to investors and shows that it has helped the oil giant earn world-beating returns. But other readers will be struck by the downside of this obsession.

The most obvious manifestation of Exxon’s focus on rewarding its shareholders can be seen in the management’s favorite financial metric, return on capital employed....more Review by Christopher Swann

Exxon Mobil shareholders may feel a warm glow when reading Steve Coll’s history of their firm. “Private Empire” reveals the company’s single-minded devotion to investors and shows that it has helped the oil giant earn world-beating returns. But other readers will be struck by the downside of this obsession.

The most obvious manifestation of Exxon’s focus on rewarding its shareholders can be seen in the management’s favorite financial metric, return on capital employed. Until relatively recently this measure of profitability showed the Texan company towering over its rivals. In 2009 its 20 percent return was close to double that of well-managed Chevron. Exxon has maintained a narrow lead even after the ill-timed acquisition of gas firm XTO Energy, which has been plagued by persistently low prices. Coll shows how a mania for discipline lies at the heart of this achievement. In finance, management and engineering Exxon labored to create idiot-proof systems that have served shareholders well.

After the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill made it clear that safety lapses could menace returns, this zeal for detail was applied to safety. Under the watchful eye of fearsome Chief Executive Lee Raymond, Exxon’s safety systems became “deeper and more pervasive than any of its peers,” in Coll’s words. Raymond designated 13 percent of new jobs as “safety positions” and micro-managed a new drug and alcohol policy - an area of particular concern since the captain of the ill-fated tanker was drunk when the spill occured. By the time Raymond had finished, failing to turn off a coffeepot might lead to a written rebuke.

Though well paid, by the standards of some peers Exxon executives have not feathered their own beds. Even the $35 million payout to current CEO Rex Tillerson in 2011 pales compared to the almost $900 million garnered by Occidental Petroleum chief Ray Irani in his last decade in the job.

Still, Exxon’s narrow investor focus made the firm slow to respond to longer-term reputational threats and to serve broader social interests. Such dangers intensified after the $81 billion takeover of Mobil in 1999, which created a firm with annual profits greater than the GDP of more than 100 nation states. While 80 percent of the old Exxon’s reserves were in North America and Europe, Mobil exposed the enlarged firm to perilous climes in West Africa, Venezuela and Indonesia.

The new firm soon suffered a severe reputational blow when it was caught up in Indonesia’s civil strife. Records show Exxon officers were aware that government soldiers paid by the firm to protect the firm’s assets were involved in human rights abuses. The firm was also embarrassed, along with others, by revelations in 2004 that it had funneled millions of dollars to the family of the authoritarian long-time president of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo - some of it through Washington-based Riggs Bank, which was sold to PNC Financial in 2005 after a series of money-laundering scandals.

Of course, Exxon has not been the only oil firm to suffer ethical pitfalls. Energy giants often have to operate in weak and corrupt states if they want access to big oilfields. Still, Exxon refused to sign the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights drawn up by the Clinton and Blair governments in 2001, which laid out best practices for operating in such hotspots. These principles seemed perfectly acceptable to peers Chevron, Shell and BP. But Exxon saw itself as almost an independent sovereign, and relied on a motley group of former Soviet KGB and CIA officials to handle such political risks.

Such moral myopia was also on view during Raymond’s campaign to discredit climate change science - again a stance aligned with the interests of shareholders only in the short term. He made no secret of his skepticism on global warming, but his strategy of also promoting this position through subterfuge and proxy groups ultimately damaged Exxon’s reputation. It has also fostered skepticism about Exxon’s later scientific conversion and support of a carbon tax.

Coll avoids high-handed moralizing in “Private Empire.” Still, his history reads like a tale of the virtues and vices of an obsession with shareholder value.
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Oct 21, 2012 Samantha rated it 5 of 5 stars

Steve Coll specializes in in-depth studies with huge casts of characters comprising presidents, dictators, executives, scientists, spies, and others in the woodwork. The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century told the parallel tales of the Saudi royal family and Osama Bin Laden's millionaire father Mohammed and his children, including such compelling characters as libertine, airplane-flying eldest son Salem. Here Coll takes on ExxonMobil's odyssey from pariah status after the Exxo...more Steve Coll specializes in in-depth studies with huge casts of characters comprising presidents, dictators, executives, scientists, spies, and others in the woodwork. The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century told the parallel tales of the Saudi royal family and Osama Bin Laden's millionaire father Mohammed and his children, including such compelling characters as libertine, airplane-flying eldest son Salem. Here Coll takes on ExxonMobil's odyssey from pariah status after the Exxon Valdez spill through the tenure of Lee "Iron Ass" Raymond, who was responsible for both ExxonMobil's obsessive focus on safety and the corporation's intransigence over climate change. The thesis isn't that ExxonMobil is evil--despite accounts of complicity in torture in Aceh in Indonesia, support of Teodoro Obiang, the dictator of Equatorial Guinea, and in the US pushing for restrictions on punitive damages in lawsuits--but that it is out for its own ends, including its own survival and continuing profitability, not for the aims of any country it does business in, including the United States. Various narrative threads are woven through the book--the events and repercussions in the above-mentioned nations as well as the saga of Raymond's succession, the company's legal maneuvering, its relationship with the George W. Bush administration, and its constant struggle to replace the oil it drills in the face of dwindling stocks of easily-accessible oil worldwide and the tendency toward "resource nationalism" in oil-producing countries. The book's closing chapters presage a new role for ExxonMobil in the future, with its new focus on natural gas and industrial applications of petroleum, its changing reputation in the wake of the BP Deepwater Horizon spill, and its grudging acknowledgement of climate change and the need for new energy sources. Like Coll's other works the book is packed with detail and well-researched. Newcomers may be put off by the length, but the account quickly draws in the reader's attention.(less)

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Jun 12, 2012 Michele Weiner rated it 4 of 5 stars

Some parts of this very detailed look at the world according to ExxonMobile are riveting - The Exxon Valdez disaster opens the book and draws one into the Big Oil story immediately. After a too-brief recounting of the reaction of Exxon to this high-profile spill, there is a too-brief "How we got here" segment which goes as far back as the breaking up of the mammoth Standard Oil into baby companies, of which ExxonMobile is one, formerly known as Esso, which is short for Standard Oil of New Jersey...more Some parts of this very detailed look at the world according to ExxonMobile are riveting - The Exxon Valdez disaster opens the book and draws one into the Big Oil story immediately. After a too-brief recounting of the reaction of Exxon to this high-profile spill, there is a too-brief "How we got here" segment which goes as far back as the breaking up of the mammoth Standard Oil into baby companies, of which ExxonMobile is one, formerly known as Esso, which is short for Standard Oil of New Jersey. Whew. And then it becomes the world according to Lee Raymond, CEO. Exxon recruits mainly from southern and midwestern universities, and mainly engineers or scientists. The corporate atmosphere is very regimented and homogeneous, almost cult-like or Amway in its boosterism and insularity. Exxon doesn't advertise like it used to and it doesn't really lobby like other people do. It just sends straight-as-an-arrow, arrogant engineers with Power Point presentations to educate the rubes about oil. Exxon believes, or did for years, that nobody not in the oil business understood the "global oil market," by which they appeared to mean that they might be bad, but if they were prohibited from some bad actions by US law, other companies from countries without scruples would just step in and buy the oil anyway. In other words, you need us more than we need you, suckers. ExxonMobile screwed the people of Alaska out of proper compensation for the continuing pollution of Prince William Sound, as BP is doing in the Gulf. They took it through the courts till all the original parties were dead, and believe that's just business played the hard way. When some public interest groups tried to do in-depth research to see if there was still oil in the sound and how it affected wildlife, ExxonMobil followed them and hounded them with FOIA requests until some quit in disgust. That didn't stop them from proving that the oil is still there and messing up the ecosystem. Exxon suborned scientists to find that global warming didn't exist for fifteen or twenty years until the overwhelming evidence and a change at the top (Raymond retired unwillingly), enabled them to slowly alter their position. The fact that the oil is at present almost always found in places that are violent makes Exxon's job more difficult. Underdeveloped societies in which oil is discovered become corrupt and warped, the general population usually loses ground while a ruling group overindulges in aircraft, jewelry and weapons. Such a society (for example, Equatorial Guinea) becomes a target for overthrow from within and without. In Indonesia, Africa and Nigeria, Exxon is forced to work with emerging regimes of various degrees of bloodthirstiness, and to expose workers to threats of violence. Sometimes, the guards hired to protect the Exxon property and operations indulge in human rights violations commensurate with that particular country's tolerance for torture and death. Bodies were buried all over the Indonesian operation, for example, and ExxonMobil is being sued, though once again plaintiffs are dying off waiting for justice. The book discusses the dealings in Venezuela, and ExxonMobile's recent reemphasis on Canadian and American sources of oil sands and natural gas trapped in shale. Despite the need to work with tinpot despots to make money, Exxon doesn't like to depend on the US government in negotiations, unless they have to. Then a well-placed word to the right person, often Dick Cheney, achieves the goal. They continue to buy Republican Congressmen, but are now also stumbling around trying to find some Democratic friends. The new CEO is efforting to bring ExxonMobil some positive publicity while trying simultaneously to guide US policy. They oppose cap and trade, for example, preferring a known carbon tax. They are beginning to understand a bit about public relations and how to talk to people nicely and not lecture them. While I don't think I would call this book an apology for the oil business, I would say that Coll definitely underplays the corruption and immorality of ExxonMobil's laser focus on profits and lack of consideration for others who share the planet. This is an ugly group of people who think they are on God's side but who actually appear to worship Capitalism as practiced in the Gilded Age. I hope we can break them up again soon.(less)

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May 16, 2012 Mal Warwick rated it 3 of 5 stars

The Truth Behind One of the Companies You Hate the Most (and It Ain't Pretty)

Until recently, when GoldmanSachs emerged as such a deserving target of opprobium, ExxonMobil was, without doubt, our country’s most-hated corporation. The two companies probably compete for that distinction today. Private Empire is Steve Coll’s admirable attempt to explain how and why the world’s most profitable private oil company became a pariah — and to relate how the company has changed in recent years. Oh, yes, it...more The Truth Behind One of the Companies You Hate the Most (and It Ain't Pretty)

Until recently, when GoldmanSachs emerged as such a deserving target of opprobium, ExxonMobil was, without doubt, our country’s most-hated corporation. The two companies probably compete for that distinction today. Private Empire is Steve Coll’s admirable attempt to explain how and why the world’s most profitable private oil company became a pariah — and to relate how the company has changed in recent years. Oh, yes, it has changed.

Unless you’re under the age of 20, you were already highly aware of the ExxonValdez disaster off the coast of Alaska in 1989 — the country’s biggest oil spill until BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil platform exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010. You probably also knew that ExxonMobil is the direct descendent of the Standard Oil trust assembled in the 19th Century by the quintessential robber baron, John D. Rockefeller. So, perhaps it’s clear how, when the company came into existence in its present form — in 1999, with the acquisition of Mobil Oil, another Standard offspring — it had already been rivaling its ancestor for public displeasure for a decade as a result of Exxon Valdez. (“Fortune had ranked the corporation as America’s sixth most admired before the accident; afterward, it fell to one hundred and tenth.”) It’s pretty hard not to know at least a few facts about a company that’s often ranked the biggest private enterprise in the world and supplies so much of the fuel to which we are so blithely addicted.

It’s no mystery why ExxonMobil stayed so unpopular many years after the Exxon Valdez spill. A heavy-handed Texan named Lee Raymond set the company’s tone and policy during his 12-year reign as CEO (1993-2005). ”Exxon maintained a ‘kind of 1950s Southern religious culture,’ said an executive who served on the corporation’s board of directors during the Raymond era. ‘They’re all engineers, mostly white males, mostly from the South . . . They shared a belief in the One Right Answer, that you would solve the equation and that would be the answer, and it didn’t need to be debated.’” And, whatever that One Right Answer might be, it was closely held unless Raymond thought it needed to be made public. As one new employee he brought on observed, “the oil corporation’s system for maintaining confidential information was far more severe than anything she had seen while holding top secret clearance at the White House.”

It was Raymond’s determined, some might say fanatical, insistence that scientists hadn’t proved the reality of human-caused global warming that led the company to invest heavily in Right-Wing think tanks and other front groups campaigning against any proposals to regulate carbon emissions. Raymond’s successor, Rex Tillerson, despite his similar background, proved far more resilient on the issue. He discontinued the corporation’s support for anti-climate change campaigners and later took a high-profile public position in favor of a carbon tax.

Interestingly, “Rex Tillerson believed that transformational change would upend the oil business and global energy economy eventually. Breakthrough batteries might be the pathway, or breakthrough biofuels, or cheaper, more efficient solar technology, or some combination of those technologies, or perhaps something unimagined in the present. Not anytime soon, however. For two decades and probably much longer, Tillerson’s Management Committee concluded . . . [that] ExxonMobil could feel secure about its investments in oil and gas.”

Like Daniel Yergin in his excellent recent book, The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World, Steve Coll debunks the notion of Peak Oil, quoting ExxonMobil executives on the significant evidence against it. However, what both authors underplay is that the large new deposits of oil and natural gas the companies are adding to their reserves, seemingly by the day, tend to require more expensive and environmentally more damaging methods of extraction. Peak Oil may not be a reality, but we’re surely in for years of increasing costs, both financial and environment, to extract fossil fuels unless the leadership of the world’s major countries manage to cap and then reduce carbon emissions.

Unfortunately, there seems little likelihood of that. ExxonMobil’s own strategic plan projects rising sales of petroleum and natural gas at least until 2030 — by which point the total load of carbon in the atmosphere will be so great that the world’s coastal cities will all be likely to drown in rising water by the end of the century. (Name a big city: odds are 4 to 1 that it’s vulnerable to flooding from rising seas.)

Private Empire showcases Coll’s exhaustive research on ExxonMobil in its 704 pages. The book is structured chronologically, focusing on the period from 1989 t0 2011. Along the way, Coll constructs detailed scenarios that reveal the issues confronting the company in a number of countries where it sources oil or gas (or mightily tries to do so): Chad, Venezuela, Equatorial Guinea, Russia, Iraq, and Qatar, among others, making clear that “ExxonMobil’s interests were global, not national.” Though the book is subtitled ExxonMobil and American Power, Coll makes clear that the corporation is anything but an expression of American power. In fact, he details the sometimes fractious relationship the company had even with the oil-friendly Administration of George W. Bush, despite Lee Raymond’s friendship with Vice President Dick Cheney.

Private Empire is a modern-day testimony to the even-handedness of “objective journalism.” Coll almost never reveals his personal feelings about the company and its misdeeds. In fact, the book will probably be read by some as an apologia for ExxonMobil. It’s not: the author is just too good at ferretting out the facts. On balance, it’s entirely clear why so many people hate ExxonMobil with such fervor.

Steve Coll is one of America’s most outstanding journalists. He’s won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for his reporting on the SEC, the other for his 2005 book Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. Since 2007 he has worked as President and CEO of a Washington think tank, the New America Foundation, having previously served as a staff writer for The New Yorker and as an editor of The Washington Post.

(From www.malwarwickonbooks.com)(less)

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May 14, 2012 Holly Morrow added it

Oh, you know I had to read this. OK, first things first: this book is only for the hardcore. I mean, you have to be REALLY interested in Exxy Mobes to get through 600+ pages of dense material here. I am about as highly motivated a reader as Steve Coll is likely to find, but it just gets loooong. OK, next: its not a hatchet job. I found it overall quite fair. It is extensively researched and gets the fundamentals of the energy business right (for example: the name of the game for oil/gas companie...more Oh, you know I had to read this. OK, first things first: this book is only for the hardcore. I mean, you have to be REALLY interested in Exxy Mobes to get through 600+ pages of dense material here. I am about as highly motivated a reader as Steve Coll is likely to find, but it just gets loooong. OK, next: its not a hatchet job. I found it overall quite fair. It is extensively researched and gets the fundamentals of the energy business right (for example: the name of the game for oil/gas companies is reserves replacement, everything else is a sideshow). The substance is accurate and generally criticizes where criticism is warranted (though praise is perhaps a bit spare and the stories that he chooses to explore in depth seem selected with a preference for showing the company in a negative light). One thing I found off: the whole “private empire” construct just doesn’t work. As Coll himself states in the introduction, he wanted to write a book about American corporate power and how it is its own force – separate and apart from traditional government power. And he kind of jams everything into that frame, especially when talking about ExxonMobil’s operations overseas. He keeps repeating phrases like “…but ExxonMobil didn’t consider itself a tool of American diplomacy; it was its own private empire.” Well, what private American company DOES consider itself a tool of US diplomacy? And is the opposite of that running a “private empire?” I found the whole idea flawed, and never substantiated – or really even explained. He just repeatedly cues the Darth Vader music and then moves on. So, given that that is a, maybe THE, central theme in the book, its an important flaw. Moreover, it assumes an omnipotence that is laughably far from what reality feels like in the company – beleaguered, subject to the whim of geology and fickle, irrational, and sometimes venal governments – both foreign and here at home. For all of Coll’s seeming attempts to show some unholy alliance between ExxonMobil and the US government (when he isn’t trying to prove the “private empire” thesis), what is actually demonstrated, even when Lee Raymond is running ExxonMobil and his buddy Dick Cheney is in the White House, is that the USG and private companies pursue their own respective interests. Sometimes those interests intersect, sometimes they don’t. But all in all, the USG doesn’t spend a huge amount of time thinking about whats best for ExxonMobil, and ExxonMobil doesn’t spend a huge amount of time thinking about whats best for the USG. What he gets very right is the culture of the company – diligent, priggish, smart as hell, data-driven, disciplined and rigorous to a fault, unsentimental. I have laughed with some ex-military guys in the company about how easy the transition must have been. And he captures very well the transition from Lee Raymond, the extremely hard-assed former CEO, to Rex Tillerson – a transition that held some subtle but important shifts in company policy. And he demonstrates some of the “can’t win” dynamics that surround a company as big and with as much baggage as Exxon – for years the company was criticized for climate denialism, but when Tillerson came out in favor of a carbon tax, it was seen as a poison pill in the cap-and-trade debate rather than a considered decision; for years the company was criticized for its lack of investment in alternative energy, but when they made a major investment in algae biofuels, many critics dismissed it as a marketing gimmick ($600 million would be a pretty expensive marketing gimmick). At any rate, I suspect this book will be a lot more ExxonMobil than people really want to curl up with. But I found it overall well-done and fair, if one cuts through the sinister and ominous smoke that wafts about in the tone of the book (starting with the black cover and scary title) and focuses on the substance.(less)

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Feb 04, 2013 Jason rated it 3 of 5 stars

An interesting read to see just how influential Oil companies can be across the world. But it was also interesting to watch how the author demonstrated the effects of oil over the last decade.

The book was written much like a history book, and it times I just had to stop reading and process what I had just read and how it all fits into the grand scheme of things.

The author felt a little slanted in the writing to what I felt as a negative tone on the oil and gas industry. Especially when climate...more

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Jul 04, 2012 Paul Pessolano rated it 4 of 5 stars

“Private Empire, ExxonMobil and American Power” by Steve Coll, published by The Penguin Press.

Category – Business

How big is ExxonMobile and how much influence does it have on politics both National and International???? Steve Coll investigates not only these questions but many more and also looks into the dealings of other oil and gas companies. Coll is very neutral in his writing showing both sides of an issue and the possible outcomes of the decisions made by the companies. It is hard to visua...more

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May 03, 2012 Patty rated it 4 of 5 stars

This was a door stopper of a book. I haven't had a real hefty book for a bit and it was a real delight to sit and hold a real solid book again. And what a book it was. Starting with the the Exxon Valdez spill and book-ending with the Deepwater Horizon disaster Private Empire details the arrogance that is ExxonMobil.

Mr. Coll's writing style is easy even when explaining oil extraction methods or the geopolitics of oil and natural gas rights. It reads almost like a suspense novel except that it's a...more

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Mar 15, 2013 Joe rated it 5 of 5 stars

A very detailed, frank and I believe fair and accurate {I am an EM executive who has worked for the company for more than 40 years} review of recent EM history under Raymond and Tillerson. It captures the basic tennents of the EM culture:

+ Defining expectations and then demanding accountability through stewardship

+ Global systems, process and procedures that are employed vigorously around the world.

+ Safety is not just a priority; it is part of the culture and an expectation

+ Contract sanctity...more

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Jul 23, 2012 Stephen Zurilla rated it 5 of 5 stars

Private Empire is a well researched look at ExxonMobil. Coll's newest book provides a detailed account of the development of a global juggernaut not only within the oil and gas industry, but also the global geopolitical scene. XOM's sphere of influence seems limitless at times. Coll's detailed explanation of the company's sovereignty and its negotiations with state government's around the world is concise and enlightening.

Coll describes the internal politics and foreign policy of the company wi...more

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Jul 26, 2012 Minyoung Lee rated it 4 of 5 stars

Disclaimer: I worked for and been involved in Exxon's major competitor since 2006, and therefore my perspective of Exxon and this book in general may be skewed. A lot of the focus of the book is based on this recent history of Exxon, which I was actually fortunate to have lived through and experienced, so I may have more of an appreciation of what the author is trying to portray about the company and the industry during the time.

That being said, I found this book extremely entertaining and true...more Disclaimer: I worked for and been involved in Exxon's major competitor since 2006, and therefore my perspective of Exxon and this book in general may be skewed. A lot of the focus of the book is based on this recent history of Exxon, which I was actually fortunate to have lived through and experienced, so I may have more of an appreciation of what the author is trying to portray about the company and the industry during the time.

That being said, I found this book extremely entertaining and true to the sentiment of what most non-Exxon people in the industry feel about Exxon. Admittedly, the content of the book was slightly different to what I had expected. I had expected some individual's viewpoints and preachy commentary, but was pleasantly surprised to find that the entire book pretty much comprised of detailed and very visual anecdotes. The overall tone of the book is very objective, and the author is definitely not trying to force anything down the reader's throat, and I appreciate this aspect of the writing very, very much.

The truth just simply is that Exxon is an extremely large and powerful company driven by stakeholder profits, and is very successful at what it does. It currently holds a credit rating better than that of the US. Us "smaller" oil companies (and the general public as well, I suppose) like to diss the company as evil and unethical, but maybe Exxon's strategy of completely disengaging itself from "morals" is exactly what makes the company so profitable in the first place. I am personally very proud of the approach my employer takes in contrast to Exxon in terms of how it treats host countries and deal with community issues, but the author did remind my guilty heart that my employer can probably do this because Exxon paves the way and opens the doors of hostile markets through its "f*ck you, we're Exxon" attitude, and we just have to slip in from behind. So kudos to Exxon and the niche it had paved in the industry and the US economy.

Love it or hate it, one still has to admit, that this formidable monster of a corporation does affect so much of the every contemporary person's life. The author did a very good job of depicting a very sensitive topic in a very objective, readable tone.(less)

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May 17, 2012 Trevor Emmitt rated it 4 of 5 stars

If anything this extremely well-researched, in-depth assessment of ExxonMobil is too fair. Well-researched and in-depth are givens when speaking of Mr. Coll, whose exhaustive Bin Laden's was incredible and surprising. Private Empire is less eye-opening than it is informative, going beneath the public antipathy towards the world's largest corporation and explaining its operating strategy meticulously - whether it be lobbying Washington, relations with third-world dictators and revolutionaries, re...more

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Oct 19, 2012 George Parker rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: blog-review

This is a four star book, even though I wish the author had followed a central time line in detailing the last twenty + years of Exxon history. Mr. Cole chose to silo the various story lines so that their complexity would be easier to follow, but I think with overlapping time lines we would have gotten an even better feel for the complexity of Exxon's worldwide businesses.

The book opens with Exxon's penultimate disaster, the Exxon Valdez, and closes with BP's Deepwater Horizon, bookending a time...more

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May 29, 2012 Sam Sattler rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: business, economics

Steve Coll’s massive volume (28 chapters, 684 pages, plus an extensive list of footnotes) on the history of ExxonMobil focuses primarily on the company’s last two decades. That the decades are bookended by two the worst oil spill disasters in the history of the oil industry is no accident. Coll is likely trying to make the point that oil companies learned little from the horror that was the 1989 Alaskan spill by the Exxon Valdez tanker. Perhaps inadvertently, he also highlights just how complica...more Steve Coll’s massive volume (28 chapters, 684 pages, plus an extensive list of footnotes) on the history of ExxonMobil focuses primarily on the company’s last two decades. That the decades are bookended by two the worst oil spill disasters in the history of the oil industry is no accident. Coll is likely trying to make the point that oil companies learned little from the horror that was the 1989 Alaskan spill by the Exxon Valdez tanker. Perhaps inadvertently, he also highlights just how complicated and dangerous is the business of exploring and transporting the energy that world economies will depend upon for several decades to come. The odds are that we have not seen the last of such spills.

John D. Rockerfeller’s Standard Oil Company became so dominant, that dedicated “trust busters” and the U.S. Supreme Court, split it into several individual oil companies in 1911. But as happened when AT&T broke apart several decades later, some of the pieces would decide it was smarter to recombine into mini-versions of the original parent company. ExxonMobil, a combination of two companies split from the original Standard Oil all those years ago, is now the largest oil company in the world.

What makes Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power so intriguing is the author’s focus on the political and economic influence ExxonMobil exerts around the world. The company’s revenues are, in fact, large enough to rank it the twenty-first largest “nation state” on the planet. ExxonMobil’s ability to come into remote areas and create revenue streams to whatever government they find there makes it more powerful and influential in parts of the world than the U.S. government (or any other government, for that matter) can claim to be. Lee Raymond, the man in charge for most of the period detailed in Private Empire, knew that he and his company would be around for the long haul – long after many government leaders, especially American presidents, had come and gone. As Raymond watched the rotation of American presidents – and spent ExxonMobil’s money to help those he favored remain in office as long as possible – he knew he could safely put the interests of ExxonMobil first, and those of the United States a distant second. And there was little anyone could do about it even if they wanted to.

Critics of Big Oil, especially those who criticize the industry because of its unwillingness to embrace fully the concept of global warming, will read much in the book that will anger them. Lee Raymond was a nonbeliever, and he did everything in his power to delay any environmental action that would negatively impact ExxonMobil’s ability to do business as usual (as Coll points out, the company stance has changed since Raymond was succeeded by Rex Tillerson). Raymond, on the other hand, did build, and rigidly enforce, a culture of safety that made oil spills and other environmental accidents as unlikely as they could possibly be. The man understood the power of public opinion and he tried to keep it on his side.

It is impossible even to touch on all the issues contained in Private Empire. There are whole chapters on ExxonMobil’s struggles with security problems around the world and how the efforts to keep employees and company assets secure often required the company’s close cooperation with some of the most brutal dictators in world history. Other chapters look at the ultimate impact of all the cash the company poured into third world countries, particularly in Africa and the Middle East – what has become known as the “resource curse.” Strikingly, when poor countries suddenly strike it rich in natural resources they often move backward rather than ahead, something akin to what happens to so many unprepared lottery winners. ExxonMobil has seen this happen, first hand, more than once.

Readers willing to tackle Private Empire will be rewarded for their efforts. As a forty-year veteran of the industry (with some of those years spent in third world countries), I was skeptical that ExxonMobil would get a fair shake in a book like this one. Having now read it, I believe Private Empire to be as evenhanded as one could hope – and worthy of the attention it is getting.
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Jan 19, 2013 Michelle rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: government-politics, history, non-fiction

an excellent and disturbing read. the degree to which exxon mobil influences american energy policy is frightening. they are not the only oil company to lobby the government, but they are certainly the biggest. their disregard for the people of the countries in which they drill (and make their billions), along with their continued dismissal of climate change (which, for an organization that is grounded in science, is utterly remarkable) makes it clear that their goal is profit no matter the cost...more

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Sep 02, 2012 Ian Walford rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: social-political-issues

I work in the oil industry and found this book to be interesting, although at times I felt a bit stretched to tie together the numerous separate sections into a cohesive narrative.

It is clear that some companies (not only ExxonMobil, and not only oil companies) have reached a scale and size such that they can influence global affairs. If you think this in itself is inherently troubling, you may be fascinated by the author's descriptions of the recent history of ExxonMobil.

On the other hand, a l...more

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Jun 20, 2012 Dan Petegorsky rated it 3 of 5 stars

There’s a ton to be learned from Steve Coll’s sprawling new opus on a sprawling business empire. It’s meticulously researched, with important insights on topics ranging from the supreme importance of oil/gas reserve replacement ratios for Exxon-Mobil’s balance sheet to the politics of oil development in Equatorial Guinea. He adopts a “just the facts, ma’am” tone, and benefits from evidently extensive access to internal corporation documents alongside more widely published sources.

This can also,...more

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Nov 03, 2012 Bonnie rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: gave-up

GAH, purchased for a class in Operations Management Strategy. I thought this was a refreshing change from a text book most commonly used for this class. BUT it is so dreadful to read - there was a unanimous vote among classmates that the prof decided to let it go.
The book is written by a journalist, and as such it reads like the longest, most boring article EVER. There were small bits that gave me hope it would not continue to be so flat, but it was not enough to hold my attention. There was...more

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May 26, 2012 Zohar - ManOfLaBook.com rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power by Steve Coll is a non-fiction book about the influence ExxonMobil yields over world economy and politics. While the book has many aspects of the company’s agenda, whether it be science or politics, with clarity and zest.

The book is composed of 28 chapters, including excellent footnotes and is divided into two parts. Part I is called The End of Easy Oil and part II is called The Risk Cycle. Instead of devoting another whole book...more Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power by Steve Coll is a non-fiction book about the influence ExxonMobil yields over world economy and politics. While the book has many aspects of the company’s agenda, whether it be science or politics, with clarity and zest.

The book is composed of 28 chapters, including excellent footnotes and is divided into two parts. Part I is called The End of Easy Oil and part II is called The Risk Cycle. Instead of devoting another whole book (or two) for the complete history of the company, Mr. Coll chose to start with the Exxon Valdez incident in March 1989 which shaped the company as we know it today.

The Exxon Valdez incident was a defining moment for the company and is covered in detail. It is a proper beginning (even though not “the” beginning) because it clearly shows how future CEO Lee Raymond would revamp Exxon’s structure and behavior using the tragedy.

Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power by Steve Coll is a compelling book about one of the biggest, most powerful and influential American companies ever created. One aspect of this book is fascinating; the other is a disturbing to realize the sway a private entity has over the affairs of the union.

Mr. Coll, a Pulitzer Prize winning author, quickly goes through the history of the company, from its inception by John D. Rockefeller as Standard Oil, through its break up by Trust Busters in 1911, the emergence of Exxon and the merger with Mobil Oil. Together with the United States, Exxon grew in power throughout the 20th Century to dominate the world’s oil market and wield significant political power.

The author chose to write around the tenure of CEO Lee Raymond to tell the story. Through Raymond’s eyes the reader understands how decisions are made, governments come and go and the rise of this global private empire.

The chapters I found fascinating, and a bit frightening to be honest, were the ones involving ExxonMobile’s security forces. After an executive Sidney Reso has been kidnapped and killed Mr. Raymond revamped the company from a security perspective. Essentially ExxonMobil became its own state with internal security (filled with ex Secret Service agents), jet fleets, soldiers (working for ExxonMobil or for a foreign government which the company paid) and a new building designed for secrecy in Dallas, TX.

In all its rigidity, ExxonMobil changes with the times. After “investing” $722,000 in political action committee money in 2008 (I call it bribes), the company decided to support a carbon tax once Obama was elected, adjusting its stance to continue its close relationship with Washington’s new administration.

Throughout the book it is told of the company’s unending pursuit for safety (including employees’ private lives) and efficiency in a worldwide context and contest. As CEO Raymond is quoted in saying: "I'm not a U.S. company and I don't make decisions based on what's good for the U.S.".

This book is by no means anti-corporate, it presents the world as ExxonMobil board might have presented them, including their views on world climate, political violence and lobbying efforts.

For More Reviews and Bookish Posts Pleas Visit: http://www.ManOfLaBook.com (less)

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Sep 09, 2012 Tim rated it 4 of 5 stars

In this well-researched and written account, Coll traces the business, politics, and policy of big oil through the window of the world's biggest non-state oil company from the grounding of the Exxon Valdez to the environmental disaster of the Deepwater Horizon and beyond. Typical of the journalist's first pass at history, the book lacks the historical depth or richer nuance of a longer look back or a wider view one might get from a historian, sociologist, or other academic. But the picture sketc...more

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Oct 10, 2012 Joe Arencibia rated it 4 of 5 stars

Having read Ghost Wars, I knew what I was getting into with Steve Coll: thoroughly researched; meticulous and methodical presentation; and real discipline in not injecting too much opinion. He's really one of the great modern historians.

If you're looking for a book on all the reasons why ExxonMobil is Satan, this isn't it. It definitely gets into a lot of their questionable business practices, murky political arrangements and general corporate ego. It spends a significant amount of time on globa...more

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Jun 10, 2012 Mark rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012-new-books, business, favorites

In Private Empire, Steve Coll examines the structure, motivation, activities, and impact of the combined oil giant, ExxonMobil, since the creation of the company by merger in 1999. Coll investigates every aspect of the company, including its internal operational process, dealings with foreign governments, manipulation of environmental "science", and the company responses to accidents, starting with the Exxon Valdez. The book is vast and comprehensive, and packed with details and careful analysis...more In Private Empire, Steve Coll examines the structure, motivation, activities, and impact of the combined oil giant, ExxonMobil, since the creation of the company by merger in 1999. Coll investigates every aspect of the company, including its internal operational process, dealings with foreign governments, manipulation of environmental "science", and the company responses to accidents, starting with the Exxon Valdez. The book is vast and comprehensive, and packed with details and careful analysis. The book is vast, definitive, and some very complicated issues. Key takeaways for me were:

1. The overriding importance of “Booked reserves” or “equity oil”, those proven reserves that a corporation controlled legally and could exploit for sale in future years. In order to maintain profitability and stock price, every single barrel of oil processed in a given year must be replaced by another. The imperative is the single most important factor driving the relationships into which ExxonMobil enters globally.

2. ExxonMobil culture is driven by the Operations Integrity Management System, or O.I.M.S., “more vinyl binders than you can possibly imagine, every single goddamn aspect of how we operate,” as a former executive put it. O.I.M.S was developed post-Exxon Valdez to insure that the company never again suffered such a disaster. Comprehensive in scope, "O.I.M.S. involved “Framework Expectations” about eleven “Elements.” These included the basic challenge of risk assessment and management. O.I.M.S. section 2.1 declared, “Risk is managed by identifying hazards, assessing consequences, and probabilities.” Five subsections of the rule outlined how to achieve this goal through the use of data, documentation, and outside evaluators. The system also addressed human frailty in the workplace. Section 5.5 prescribed that Exxon employees should “routinely identify and eliminate their at-risk behaviors and those of their co-workers” while ensuring that “Human Factors, workforce engagement, and leadership behaviors are addressed.”

3. The leadership of ExxonMobil conceives of the company as a private empire, with no ties of loyalty or obligation to the United States, or indeed anyone but themselves. The company can and does aggressively pursue policies and positions that are indirect opposition to those of the U.S. Government. To give but one example of many, the company chief executive, Lee Raymond, to reject the Kyoto Protocol being negotiated by the Clinton administration: "It was extraordinary for the chief executive of a U.S.-headquartered multinational to lobby against a treaty he disliked by appealing to a Chinese Communist government, among others, to adopt a negotiating position opposed to a sitting American president. Raymond believed, however, that his obligation as Exxon’s chief executive was not primarily to support American diplomacy—and certainly not when he disagreed with its assumptions so profoundly. The Beijing address was “seminal,” recalled Frank Sprow, a senior Exxon executive who worked closely with Raymond on the climate issue."

4. And yet, ExxonMobil won't hesitate for a heartbeat to reach out to the U.S. government and demand action when it suits them:"In Washington, recalled a State Department official involved as the attacks worsened, “the oil companies kept telling us, ‘Goddamnit, can’t the C.I.A. and the navy solve this problem? We’ll tell you where they [the militants] are. . . . Why can’t you fix this swampy corner? It’s a bunch of pirates. Why can’t you just send the navy in there and fix this?’”

5. While funding bogus "science" to cast doubt on the reality of global warming, the company, knowing the truth, is preparing to exploit resources made available by the impact of global warming: "These investments in skeptics of the scientific consensus coincided with what at least a few of ExxonMobil’s own managers regarded as a hypocritical drive inside the corporation to explore whether climate change might offer new opportunities for oil exploration and profit. One of ExxonMobil’s most accomplished earth scientists, Peter Vail, had won acclaim for his insights into how changes on the earth’s surface affected ocean levels and other geological shifts. Vail had developed a calculation known as the Vail curve to describe some of these ocean events. In the ExxonMobil upstream division in Houston, scientists in charge of finding new deposits of oil and gas began to explore whether Vail’s scientific insights might give them a leg up in exploration by allowing them to predict how climate change—if it did materialize—might alter surface and ocean trends and lead the corporation to new oil finds. “So don’t believe for a minute that ExxonMobil doesn’t think climate change is real,” said a former manager involved with the internal scientific review. “They were using climate change as a source of insight into exploration.” This work remained unpublicized.

This is an excellent book, eye opening, full of detail, and well worth the substantial investment in time and effort to read.
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May 29, 2012 Patricia rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone who wants to work for or do business with Exxon

Shelves: non-fiction

I am not going to give this a rating ... I liked it but I it sure isn't for everyone.

I may know one or two people who work for this company, and I was interested to see how poorly Coll portrayed Exxon. Yet, I was surprised by how fair and balanced he was. But, let me tell you, he nailed the culture. Strict, competitive, no room for mistakes. Yep. ExxonMobil is always right. Always. Even when they aren't, they are. And a good bit of advice if you ever want to do business with the company ... be p...more

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Nov 10, 2012 Breaux rated it 2 of 5 stars

This book didn't quite do it for me. Something was missing. It was very informative, and I learned a lot about Exxon from the time of the Valdez spill to the recent BP spill. Coll even followed the formula that seems to be in vogue now in non-fiction: make it read like a novel, involving the reader in the "characters" and their personalities. He did that. Maybe it's that I'm such a fan of the novel that it wasn't novel-like enough to satisfy me. I now know a lot more than I did about Exxon and o...more

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Feb 15, 2013 Suman rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: audiobook

Private Empire is an insanely well-researched book about the history of ExxonMobil and its business throughout the world. There's a wealth of information about how ExxonMobil, which needs to replace its oil and natural gas resources in a world with depleting supply, end up in increasingly unstable regions such as Equatorial Guinea, Chad, Nigeria, Iraq, and Aceh,Indonesia. Also interesting is how ExxonMobil interacts with the United States government, which is far more complicated than a simple,...more

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Mar 12, 2013 Tom rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This business history of Exxon and after Mobil was aquired, ExxonMobil is more exciting read than may be imaginged, but of course it is a relevant one in this Oil Age. A lot of the story as oil exploration brings proximity to war, revolution, and genocide reads like the boardroom view of the sme tale told in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. This includes a fair amount of detail on the bizarre, failed recent attempt to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea. The bizarre economics and sh...more

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Jan 12, 2013 Shane rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is an interesting story of Exxon in particular, the oil industry generally, and most broadly aspects of corporate America from the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in 1989 to the BP Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010. It's a good read, and I recommend it to anyone with an interest in the subject. Mr. Coll is an excellent writer and he manages to make a corporate history book interesting and thought provoking.

My only criticism would be that at time it seemed like the author was limited to X num...more

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Aug 26, 2012 Jeff rated it 3 of 5 stars

I heard an extended interview of the author on the radio driving to work at ExxonMobil one morning. I don't know how interesting this would be to most, but it was a fascinating read for an employee. The sense of the corporate culture seems spot on. The relationship of the company and international corporations generally to the US government is remarkable. Power is power, and corporations have become so large that they have the weight of nations in international affairs. This book is an easy read...more

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Feb 09, 2013 KC rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history

ExxonMobil is a massive, sprawling corporation, so it should come as no surprise that Steve Coll has written a large, sprawling book. Even though most of the book takes place in the space of just a dozen years (1998-2010), there is an astonishing amount of ground to cover. The scale of the book itself convinces you that the title isn't just journalistic hyperbole; the multiple narratives alternate between Alaska, Chad, Nigeria, Russia, Indonesia, Venezuela, Texas, and Washington - all places whe...more ExxonMobil is a massive, sprawling corporation, so it should come as no surprise that Steve Coll has written a large, sprawling book. Even though most of the book takes place in the space of just a dozen years (1998-2010), there is an astonishing amount of ground to cover. The scale of the book itself convinces you that the title isn't just journalistic hyperbole; the multiple narratives alternate between Alaska, Chad, Nigeria, Russia, Indonesia, Venezuela, Texas, and Washington - all places where Exxon has interests to defend and partners to negotiate with (I suffered from reader's fatigue by about 550 pages but it's tough to criticize Coll on this point; I really came away with an appreciation for the diverse interests and considerations of a corporation that just reclaim the crown of "most valuable corporation in the world" from Apple).

The greatest benefit of these dueling narratives is the ability to see how Exxon responds as an organization to a wide variety of challenges. Broad comparisons always raise the possibility of overreach, but it becomes remarkably easy to see Exxon as a (not-so-micro) microcosm of American business: undeniably smart, industrious, and financially successful, but often parochial and rigid in its thinking, consumed by an overwhelming confidence in its own abilities and a tendency towards one-size-fits-all solutions. Exxon's perceived arrogance is a recurring problem in its dealings with the American public, foreign governments, and even its competitors in the oil industry. Exxon also exhibits a remarkable hypocrisy in its relations with the U.S. government - professing a desire to keep the White House at arm's length right up until the moment it needs a diplomatic push against some recalcitrant foreign leader. And perhaps most notoriously, Exxon was for a time the leading corporate sponsor of climate change denialism, although Coll is scrupulous about documenting the corporation's subtle pivot away from denialism under its most recent CEO.

The implicit and explicit criticisms of this book leave their mark because Coll displays the merits of the company along with its faults. The book opens with Lee Raymond's complete overhaul of safety protocols after Exxon Valdez and repeatedly emphasizes Exxon's dedication to the enforcement of fair and honest contracts with its counterparties in government and business. Anyone looking for tales of corruption and untrammeled greed will come away disappointed, even though the corporation is relentless in its own defense against popular, regulatory, and legal challenges. Exxon doesn't flout the law, but its sheer size and global presence allows it to outmaneuver its opponents within the existing legal framework. That size and influence still provides plenty of reason for concern, but suggests that the real problem lies with the country's inability to establish a strong and continuous energy policy that can fulfill the nation's needs. In the absence of such a strong government agenda, Exxon's single-minded messaging and PR machine will continue to have an outsized influence on American domestic and foreign policy.

An excellent profile of a famous-yet-secretive company and highly recommended for anyone interested in corporate America or energy policy. (less)

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About Steve Coll

Steve Coll is President & CEO of New America Foundation, and a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine. Previously he spent 20 years as a foreign correspondent and senior editor at The Washington Post, serving as the paper's managing editor from 1998 to 2004.

He is author six books, including The Deal of the Century: The Break Up of AT&T (1986); The Taking of Getty Oil (1987); Eagle on t ...more

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