Oil God+gold CL

Everything about the story of the American interest in Arabian oil is big. Standard Oil (whose post-Antitrust Act components formed Aramco in 1947 in the largest corporate merger the world had seen) made trillions of dollars over its history, produced millions of barrels of oil daily by the late 1950s and, to a mind-boggling extent, successfully intervened in international politics to protect its interests. Brown's skill in relating the complex relations among the Saudi royal family, the secretive oil executives and the American and British governments is no less impressive. The story begins with how, between the world wars, Standard Oil challenged and--with the help of the same American government that had busted its trust--beat the British Empire in the race for the prize of Arabian oil. Brown hangs this part of his account on the lives and deeds of three men: Ibn Saud, the Arab prince allied with the British in WWI who founded the Saudi dynasty; John D. Rockefeller, the American oil baron; and Harry St. John Philby, a British agent who advised Ibn Saud. (Brown likens Philby to his infamous son, Soviet spy Kim Philby, arguing that his loyalty to Ibn Saud led him to ""betray"" Britain by advising the king ultimately to favor Standard Oil over the Empire.) Brown brings the reader through the post-WWII transfer of world hegemony from the British Empire to the U.S., explaining the symbiosis of corporate and Saudi politics against the backdrop of the Cold War, the Israeli-Arab conflict and the Iran-Iraq war. It's a great story well told. The only shortcoming is that Brown relies so heavily on Aramco documents that his history is skewed a little too much to the corporate side, relegating geopolitics to a secondary, though still vital, role. (Feb.)