Category: Blog

A while back my editor at Knopf, Jon Segal, showed me a proposed cover for Crude World. I really liked some elements of the design but other things didn’t work for me. So what to do? Knopf would not use a cover I didn’t approve of, but Jon reminded me that Knopf had a bit more experience ...  (Read more)

No, I’m not talking about you, though I’m sure you’re good looking, too. I’m talking about this website, which has been redesigned to focus on Crude World. Please go ahead and rummage through the revised site, which looks fantastic (I know, I’m biased). The wonderful Andrew Hearst ...  (Read more)

Several chapters of Crude World delve into oil corruption, and that means I have spent an unhealthy amount of time looking into prosecutions under the Foreign Corrupt Practices ...  (Read more)

Today’s New York Times offers not one but two stories about oil and power. The first, on the front page, delves into Iran and the ways the Revolutionary Guards have become, as the article says, ...  (Read more)

Just a quick note to mention that my new book, Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil, will be published in September. The early reviews are encouraging. Publishers Weekly says Crude World is “heartfelt and beautifully crafted.” Kirkus describes it as “breathless, ...  (Read more)

In the summer of 1992 a young Bosnian doctor was infiltrated into Srebrenica, a desperate enclave that was besieged by Serb troops. Nedret Mujkanovic served as Srebrenica’s only surgeon, working in 19th-century conditions because the enclave had little medicine or medical equipment; he often ...  (Read more)

If you read the New York Times’ coverage of Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years you would have noticed the remarkable work of Dexter Filkins, one of the best war correspondents of our times. Dexter has written an amazing book about his experiences, The Forever War, and next week I’m ...  (Read more)

In the debate about Iraq, it has become a convention in hawkish American circles to blame the Bush administration for bad execution of a good idea (i.e. invading a large Middle Eastern nation). “Generation Kill,” a powerful new HBO miniseries, offers a reality-based counter-narrative that ...  (Read more)

If you’re thinking “Robert Mugabe,” you may be wrong. How about Teodoro Obiang? I wrote a short piece about him for Slate.