JOHN GHAZVINIAN has a doctorate in history from Oxford. He has written for Newsweek, the Nation, Time Out New York, and other publications. Born in Iran and raised in London and Los Angeles, he lives in Philadelphia, where he teaches in the Critical Writing Program at the University of Pennsylvania.
PRAISE FOR UNTAPPED "[A] riveting account and superb analysis of what African oil means to a fuel-hungry world and to the African nations involved."--The Boston Globe "Perceptive . . . Untapped drills home the point . . . that a thoughtful strategy to lift the neglected bottom billion must compete against the global giants going about their business."--The New York Times --
With American relations in the Middle East on shaky ground, the U.S. government and the petroleum industry have turned to Africa as a new source of oil, investing more than a billion dollars a year in the continent since 1990. China and India are also looking to African crude oil, which is lighter and sweeter than its Arab counterpart and thus requires less costly refining, to fuel their booming economies. So Ghazvinian, an Oxford historian armed with a suitcase full of notepads and malaria pills, and a sweaty money belt stuffed with $100 bills, toured a dozen oil-producing nations to see how they'd been affected by the oil boom. What he finds is internal strife: in Nigeria, the only thing that keeps one group of interview subjects from assaulting him is that he doesn't work for Shell. Later, an official in the self-parodying burlesque of a tin-pot kleptocracy, Equatorial Guinea, makes a not-so-veiled threat after soliciting a bribe falls through. Even more stable nations have their problems: in Gabon the national economy was so transformed by oil that the government has to import most of its food from neighboring countries. Ghazvinian's ground-level interviews bring perspective to the chaos, though readers may wish for a map to follow his path through the unfamiliar territory. (Apr.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.
PRAISE FOR UNTAPPED "[A] riveting account and superb analysis of what African oil means to a fuel-hungry world and to the African nations involved."--The Boston Globe "Perceptive . . . Untapped drills home the point . . . that a thoughtful strategy to lift the neglected bottom billion must compete against the global giants going about their business."--The New York Times --
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