Blowout

My god. If you'd ever like to feel incandescently angry (as if there are not enough things in the world right now to prompt such feelings!), please pick up this book. Published in 2019, it makes everything about Russia's current war on Ukraine obvious (spoiler alert: oil, it's always about oil), to the point that I'd love an update from Maddow on how everything she writes about has persisted or even escalated. I would say the anger is worth the increased understanding, and I appreciate Maddow's huge capacity for weaving threads together: everything from Equitorial Guinea's dictatorship to fracking-induced seismic events in Oklahoma are, at the end of the day, about oil. The only reason this isn't a 5-star book for me is that the absolute absurdity of the situation doesn't actually need dark humor as an enhancement, and I think she veers a little too often into snappy asides that don't actually underscore the power of the story she is telling. Basically, her humor feels too much like what she does on television, as opposed to adapted to this form of media. But yeah, overall, everyone should read this.

I liked learning something new and putting things together. I could have done without all the snark. I listened to this book like I did the author's podcast series “Bag Man”. Which was awesome. This was an ok book maybe if I had read it instead of listen to it, it would have been better for me. Again, loved the subject material and I learned a ton but some days I just needed a break.

Rachel Maddow once again writes a thoughtful, compelling, and riveting work of exemplary scholarship. Well worth the time. It is absolutely wild just how much the oil and gas industry has to answer for, and just how little it generally seems to care about literally anything but its own profit margin.