Recently in Books Category

A few notes from this year's Americas Assembly of The Oil Council in New York.

(Unfortunately, no media breakfast this year; the prior two were interesting affairs that you can read about here and here.)

(With contributions from Platts staff members Sheela Tobben and Leslie Moore Mira.)

There have been reviews published recently of Daniel Yergin's new book, The Quest: Energy, Security and the Remaking of the Modern World. Only a professional reviewer, given an advance copy, could have finished this massive tome by now; it was released less than two weeks ago.

The little meter on my Kindle tells me I've read 12% of the book. And already, I've encountered a terrific tale of one of the oil industry's more significant developments in recent history: la apertura.

Marc Rich has finally spoken.

He's spoken a lot, apparently, to Daniel Ammann, and even took a picture with him. That in itself is newsworthy, because The King of Oil, as the title of the book written by Ammann describes Rich, has talked very little over the years.

"Dire Predictions - Understanding Global Warming," a guide to the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is likely to infuriate climate skeptics because it is so user friendly that it could become a popular default source for information on what has been called the gravest environmental challenge of the 21st century (among a host of envirnmental challnges).

The book distills the more than 2,000 pages of the three latest IPCC reports, released last year, into 200 lavishly illustrated pages. It offers in broad strokes what the IPCC provides in so much greater detail. But while few casual readers are likely to plow through the densely written, heavily foot-noted IPCC reports, "Dire Predictions" is an easy read.

Former Platts' senior writer Jim Norman has written a book spelling out a rather different view of why the price of oil is climbing.

It's hard to determine what exactly to make of Rigged, the story behind the founding of the Dubai Mercantile Exchange and the role of its partner, the New York Mercantile Exchange. It's described as nonfiction, but the main characters' names have been changed. Two of the key characters -- Gallo, who represents the wildly successful, crusty old floor trader resistant to change, and Khaleed, the key representative of the Dubai government -- are described as composite.

(A review of Rigged can be found here.)
The Barrel heard that this newly-released book was a #1 bestseller. It is...under the almost comically subdivided category of Business & Investing/Industries & Professions/Oil & Energy. What's funny is the number two book in that category is Daniel Yergin's The Prize, which was published when the first George Bush was in office. So there doesn't seem to be a lot of fresh competition.

What we first heard here at The Barrel was that Rigged was about the founding of the Dubai Mercantile Exchange. But if you look over the advertising blurbs on Amazon, it looks a lot more personal than that. In fact, the book also is a number 2 bestseller in the category of Business & Investing/Biography & History.

So we note the book here at The Barrel, because it's certainly a subject of recent buzz.