Argues that obtaining energy through the hydraulic fracturing of shale rock is based on unstable economic foundations, and is having much more destructive effects on the economy and the government of the United States than its advocates claim.

Contains primary and secondary source documents that provide varying perspectives on the issue of U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

"Bill McKibben is not a person you'd expect to find handcuffed in the city jail in Washington, D.C. But that's where he spent three days in the summer of 2011, after leading the largest civil disobedience in thirty years to protest the Keystone XL pipeline. A few months later the protesters would see their efforts rewarded when President Obama agreed to put the project on hold. And yet McKibben realized that this small and temporary victory was at...

In this book the author goes deep inside ExxonMobil Corp, the largest and most powerful private corporation in the United States. He 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...

With her trademark black humor, Rachel Maddow takes us on a switchback journey around the globe, revealing the greed and incompetence of Big Oil and Gas along the way, and drawing a suprising conclusion about why the Russian government hacked the 2016 U.S. election. She deftly shows how Russia's rich reserve of crude have, paradoxically, stunted its growth, forcing Putin to maintain his power by spreading Russia's rot into its rivals, its neighbors,...