#1 NY Occasions BESTSELLER • Big Oil and Gas Versus Democracy-Winner Take All

In 2010 2010, the words “earthquake swarm” entered the lexicon in Oklahoma. That same season, a trove of Michael Jackson memorabilia-including his iconic crystal-encrusted white glove-was offered at public sale for over $1 million to a man who was simply, officially, simply the lowly forestry minister of the tiny nation of Equatorial Guinea. And in 2014, Ukrainian revolutionaries raided the palace of their ousted chief executive and discovered a about Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue Condition Russia, and the Richest, Many Destructive Industry on the planet zoo of peacocks, gilded toilets, and a floating cafe modeled after a Spanish galleon. Unlikely as it might seem, there’s a thread linking these events, and Rachel Maddow comes after it to its crooked resource: the unimaginably profitable and equally corrupting oil and gas industry.

With her brand black laughter, Maddow takes us on a switchback journey around the globe, uncovering the greed and incompetence of Big Oil and Gas on the way, and sketching a surprising bottom line about why the Russian federal government hacked the 2016 U.S. election. She deftly shows how Russia’s wealthy reserves of crude have, paradoxically, stunted its development, forcing Putin to keep up his power by distributing Russia’s rot into its competitors, its neighbors, the West’s most important alliances, and the United States. Chevron, BP, and a bunch of other sector players obtain star turn, especially ExxonMobil and the deceptively well-behaved Rex Tillerson. The coal and oil industry offers weakened democracies in developed and developing countries, fouled oceans and rivers, and propped up authoritarian thieves and killers. But becoming outraged at it really is, according to Maddow, “like being indignant when a lion takes down and eats a gazelle. You can’t really blame the lion. It’s in her nature.”

Blowout is normally a contact to contain the lion: to avoid subsidizing the wealthiest businesses on the planet, to combat for transparency, and to check the influence of the world’s many destructive industry and its own enablers. The stakes haven’t been higher. As Maddow writes, “Democracy either wins that one or disappears.”