OIL POWER: The Rise and Imminent Fall of an American Empire

Solberg's book is another contribution to a series of muckraking volumes on the oil industry stretching from Ida Tarbell to Robert Engler. Oil Power seems largely derivative of a great many earlier works. Solberg's strong point is his assemblage of much US oil industry history into an easy-to-read and flashy package. He competently covers the petroleum industry's beginnings in Pennsylvania, John D. Rockefeller's construction of the Standard Oil monopoly through shady railroad rebates, the Texas oil boom, Teapot Dome, and the major companies' enormous political power as America's strongest lobby. But he is weak on international issues and the events of the last decade leading up to the current energy crisis. Tacked onto the end is a brief discussion of the thesis that oil is at the end of its domination and that other fuel sources must now replace it-an assertion which might well be true but is certainly not proved here. An adequate introduction to the subject. Nothing more.