Steve Coll

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Steve Coll goes deep inside ExxonMobil Corp, the largest and most powerful private corporation in the United States In Private Empire, Steve Coll investigates the notoriously secretive ExxonMobil Corporation, revealing the true extent of its power. ExxonMobil’s annual revenues are larger than the economic activity in the great majority of countries, equivalent to the GDP of Norway. In many of the countries where it conducts business, ExxonMobil’s sway over politics and security is greater than that of the United States embassy. In Washington, ExxonMobil spends more money lobbying Congress and the White House than any other corporation. Yet despite its outsized influence, it is a black box. Private Empire begins with the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989 and closes with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The narrative spans the globe, taking readers to Moscow, impoverished African capitals, Indonesia, and elsewhere in heart-stopping scenes that feature kidnapping cases, civil wars, and high-stakes struggles at the Kremlin. At home, Coll goes inside ExxonMobil’s K Street office and corporation headquarters in Irving, Texas, where top executives in the “God Pod” (as employees call it) oversee an extraordinary corporate culture of discipline and secrecy. The action is driven by larger than life characters, including corporate legend Lee “Iron Ass” Raymond, ExxonMobil’s chief executive until 2005. A close friend of Dick Cheney’s, Raymond was both the most successful and effective oil executive of his era and an unabashed skeptic about climate change and government in all its aspects. The larger cast includes Raymond’s successor, Rex Tillerson, who broke with Raymond and tried to reset ExxonMobil’s public image; as well as the countless world leaders, plutocrats, dictators, guerrillas, and corporate scientists who are part of ExxonMobil’s colossal story. The first hard-hitting examination of ExxonMobil, Private Empire is the masterful result of Steve Coll’s indefatigable reporting. He draws here on more than four hundred interviews; field reporting from the halls of Congress to the oil-laden swamps of the Niger Delta; more than one thousand pages of previously classified U.S. documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act; heretofore unexamined court records; and many other sources. A penetrating, news-breaking study, Private Empire will be the definitive portrait of ExxonMobil.

Location: Street: 2421 Bissonnet St City: Houston, Province: Texas Postal Code: 77005-1451 Country: United States (added from IndieBound)… (more)

Two-Tme Pulitzer Prize Winner Steve Coll will speak & sign Private Empire: Exxon Mobil and American Power

In Private Empire, Steve Coll investigates the notoriously secretive ExxonMobil Corporation, revealing the true extent of its power. ExxonMobil’s annual revenues are larger than the economic activity in the great majority of countries, equivalent to the GDP of Norway. In many of the countries where it conducts business, ExxonMobil’s sway over politics and security is greater than that of the United States embassy. In Washington, ExxonMobil spends more money lobbying Congress and the White House than any other corporation. Yet despite its outsized influence, it is a black box.

Coll draws here on more than four hundred interviews; field reporting from the halls of Congress to the oil-laden swamps of the Niger Delta; more than one thousand pages of previously classified U.S. documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act; heretofore unexamined court records; and many other sources. A penetrating, newsbreaking study, Private Empire will be the definitive portrait of ExxonMobil.

Steve Coll is most recently the author of the New York Times bestseller The Bin Ladens. He is the president of the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan public policy institute headquartered in Washington, D.C., and a staff writer for The New Yorker. Previously he worked for twenty years at The Washington Post, where he received a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism in 1990. He is the author of six other books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Ghost Wars. He lives in Washington and New York.

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Location: Street: 603 N Lamar Blvd City: Austin, Province: Texas Postal Code: 78703-5413 Country: United States (added from IndieBound)… (more)

Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power Steve Coll Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author Steve Coll is the author of The Bin Ladens, a sprawling history of the bin Laden clan and a “psychologically detailed portrait of the brutal 9/11 mastermind” (New York Times), and Ghost Wars, a narrative of the CIA's involvement in the evolution of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. A staff writer for The New Yorker, Coll has served as managing editor and South Asia bureau chief of the Washington Post. In Private Empire, Coll probes the infamously secret world of ExxonMobil Corporation—from the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989 to the 2010 Gulf oil spill—and draws on previously classified sources to report the colossal extent of the company’s global power. Parkway Central Library 1901 Vine Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 (between 19th and 20th Streets on the Parkway) This is a FREE event; no tickets or reservations are required. For more information, please call 215-567-4341, or click here

Location: Street: Free Library of PHiladelphia Additional: 1901 Vine Street City: Philadelphia, Province: Pennsylvania Postal Code: 19103-5207 Country: United States (added from IndieBound)… (more)

The recent history of ExxonMobil includes dealings with dictators, entanglement in civil wars, annual revenues that match Norway’s GDP, climate-change denial, and above all, secrecy. In his report on the corporation’s global activities from 1989 and the Valdez spill to the present, the two-time Pulitzer-winning author of Ghost Wars draws on previously classified documents, court records, and hundreds of interviews for a portrait of a company that outspends all others on lobbying Congress and the White House.

Street: 5015 Connecticut Ave NW City: Washington, Province: District Of Columbia Postal Code: 20008 Country: United States (added from IndieBound)… (more)

Steve Coll , The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century.

STEVE COLL, New Yorker writer and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ghost Wars, speaks about The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century, the story of the Bin Laden family's rise to power and privilege - showing how American influences changed the family and how one of its members changed America. Free. Reservations requested:
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