Private Empire
  • Published: 26 September 2012
  • ISBN: 9780718194468
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 704

Private Empire

ExxonMobil and American Power

Formats & editions
EBook
26 Sep 2012
Paperback
24 Jul 2013
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Pulitzer Prize-winner Steve Coll tells the shocking story of one of the most powerful private corporations in the world

Winner of the FT/GOLDMAN SACHS BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2012

In Private Empire, Steve Coll investigates the notoriously secretive ExxonMobil Corporation, revealing the true extent of its power. In many of the countries where it operates, ExxonMobil has a greater sway than that of the US embassy. Yet despite its outsized influence, it is to outsiders a black box.

Private Empire begins with the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989 and closes with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The narrative spans the globe as ExxonMobil carries out its activities against a backdrop of blackmail threats, kidnapping and civil wars. In the US, Coll goes inside ExxonMobil's ruthless Washington lobbying offices and its corporate headquarters. Coll draws on more than 400 interviews; field reporting from the halls of Congress to the oil-laden swamps of the Niger Delta; previously classified documents; court records; and many other sources. Private Empire is a chilling, definitive portrait of ExxonMobil.
  • Published: 26 September 2012
  • ISBN: 9780718194468
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 704
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About the author

Steve Coll

Steve Coll is most recently the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Ghost Wars. He also won a 1990 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism. He covered Afghanistan as the Washington Post's South Asia bureau chief between 1989 and 1992 and has been the Post's managing editor since 1998. He is the author of five books, including On the Grand Trunk Road and The Taking of Getty Oil. He lives with his wife and three children in Maryland.

portrait photo of Steve Coll

Also by Steve Coll

The Achilles Trap
Directorate S
The Bin Ladens
Ghost Wars: The Secret History Of The Cia, Afghanistan And Bin Laden, From The Soviet Invasion To September 10, 2001
See all

Praise for Private Empire

Magisterial ... a revealing history of our time, a chronicle of the intersection between energy and politics

Bill McKibben, New York Review of Books

Meticulously researched and elegantly written, it is likely to be the definitive work on its subject for many years to come. Steve Coll ... is honest about Exxon's strengths as well as its flaws, and presents both sides of the arguments with scrupulous even-handedness ... At every stop there are vivid anecdotes, sharp insights and telling details

Ed Crooks, Financial Times

Masterful ... Coll's in-depth reporting, buttressed by his anecdotal prose, make Private Empire a must-read ... [His] portrait of ExxonMobil is both riveting and appalling... Yet Private Empire is not so much an indictment as a fascinating look into American business and politics

San Francisco Chronicle

Meticulous, multi-angled and valuable ... Coll's prose sweeps the earth like an Imax camera

Dwight Garner, New York Times

A thorough, sobering study of the pernicious consolidation of Big Oil ... jaw-dropping reading

Kirkus Reviews