This installment of the Big Business series of books by ABDO publishing outlines major points of the international oil industry from history to modern and future production. Chapter titles give clear indication for where information may be found. For the parts of the book that deal with the history of the oil industry, Wil Mara obviously organizes the chapters in chronological order with sensible transitions to different periods, and the other chapter titles are clear enough that one can tell generally what it is about. “How It All Works Today” would indicate to me that the chapter would be concerning the drilling, refining, transportation, and uses of oil in modern times and it is. I would say that I would not have started with a chapter on oil technology innovation then proceed into a lengthy section of the book dealing with history, to come back to modern methods and politics. I might have broken the book into two parts: history and from today forward.
The front cover makes it very clear what the general aesthetic of the book will be. Large photographs and attractive graphic designs permeate the text to catch and hold the attention of students of all ages. Moving into the book, the endpages are blank, which could have been easily modified with any relevant photograph(s), even if the entire page weren’t taken up. I noticed on the copyright page, there is a notice that says the book is printed on recycled paper. I appreciate that and find it especially fitting for this book in particular.
The author uses a neutral tone throughout the book, being careful to try to include multiple sides for arguments about alternative energy. The last paragraph of the book for example, “Companies are also searching for new sources of petroleum. These efforts have continued to stir up controversy among those who believe the conversion to alternative energy sources should start now. However, transitioning the world’s economy and infrastructure away from oil will not be an easy process. For more than a century, the world has run on oil. And for the foreseeable future, it will remain a critical component of the planet’s energy supply.” (p.94) For the age group, this is absolutely crucial so that they may form their own opinions and not just be told that one way is right. Children will often believe the first opinion they are told is right on a political issue and not even fully consider alternatives until forced. I also very much appreciate the precise language used by Mara because even if a younger student is not understanding every word they read, they are at least getting exposure to the correct and more sophisticated vocabulary.
This series of books also improves clarity with clear transitions between chapters, changing the background of the page to a deep blue and having a relevant full page photograph on the left-hand page. Frequent sidebars also give further information when a topic had to be glossed over slightly in the main text. At the end of the text, there is a nice map showing national oil production percentages as of 2016, followed by a timeline, glossary, and index, as well as very detailed source information.
Overall, I think this book does what it was designed to do very well, it gives students a shallow, but very broad overview of the global oil production scene, and just how impactful this chemical anomaly has become in modern society. This is a vital thing to know about for many fields, especially politics or geology. There was one issue, however that I noticed that seemed pretty glaring. The chapters on history of course cover all major wars, as oil was a very large contributing factor to political pressures, and of course military prowess, “Oil, the blood of the Earth, was the blood of victory…Germany had boasted too much of its superiority in iron and coal, but it had not taken sufficient account of our superiority in oil… As oil had been the blood of war, so it would be the blood of the peace.” (p.42) As soon as it gets to the 80’s however, it just zooms through the chapter, spending one paragraph on the two and a half decades between 1990 and when the book was written somewhere between 2015 and 2016. The closest mentioning of our conflict in the middle east is one sentence, “A spike in oil prices occurred in 1990, driven by market panic in the wake of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait.” (p.66) While the war was not chiefly about oil, it definitely still seemed relevant enough to warrant some discussion, especially seeing as some of the readers in the intended audience at the publication date of 2017 were alive for the attack on 9/11. ( )