"Sonia Shah weaves together the science, economics, politics, and social history of oil in a way that will forever change the way we look at the world's most coveted and contentious mineral. She takes us on a globe-trotting journey to the far corners of the Earth and the depths of the seas, with would be oil barons, hundreds of Nigerian women who stormed a Chevron plant, and a monomaniacal scientist who speaks of oil's "lovely organic molecules.""--BOOK JACKET.