5 comments about Crude: The Story of Oil.

1. There is tons of great information in this book. I would certainly recommend it to anyone who's attempting to find out more about the oil industry, and its sordid history. I'm guessing that most people fill up their gas tanks each week have no idea of the tortuous path that gasoline takes from the time its pumped from the ground to its eventual transfer to the local gas station.
   
   The negative effects that the oil industry has had on the environment will be felt for perhaps hundreds of years. I, for one, am very glad for the advent of Peak Oil. In fact, the entire world would have been better off had oil never been discovered.
   
   Back to the book, Shah does a good job of covering an immense amount of information and condensing it down to a slim volume. I would have like to have more detail in some areas, but certainly understand the parameters under which she was working.
   
   I highly recommend this book, even to people who are more inclined to view the oil industry favorably.



2. I must say Sonia Shah has done a masterful job of covering the history and geography of oil very succinctly and brilliantly in such a slim volume. This is a good book on oil for those beginners who want to understand the politics and the economics of oil. As Daniel Yergin has said: oil has brought out both the best and the worst of our civilization over almost a century and a half and it has been both boon and burden. This is very well captured by her in her book. Those who want to or need to know something about oil in a hurry should find this book very helpful.



3. Sonia Shah, an Asian-American feminist whose free-lance writing has appeared in leftist publications such as "The Nation", has written an easy-to-read 250-paged book that begins with some earth science followed by a short history of oil, then evolves into a `Green' critique of oil dependency as an energy resource. The parts that cover the history of `black gold' include the preface "For the Love of Oil", introduction "Oil is Born", chapter one "The Eclipse of Coal", chapter two "Exile from Tethys", chapter three "Into the Cold", chapter four "Rockefeller's Ghost", and chapter five "Refining the Hunt". The chapters that critique the oil business and the manner in which oil is consumed are chapter six "Aftershocks", chapter seven "The Curse of Crude", chapter eight "Carbon Perils", chapter nine "Running on Empty", chapter ten "Challengers, Old and New", and a conclusion "Death Throes". These chapters are followed by tables, notes, index, and acknowledgments.
   
   Shah begins her tale noting that oil-rich countries are filled with poor people: "Within a century of drilling the first oil well in 1859 . . . Americans alone gorge on no less than three gallons every day - the average Asian or African receives few of the benefits of the planet's crude" (pviii), despite living on top of vast reserves of oil in places such as Indonesia or Nigeria. Shah explains "The giant Western oil companies don't own access to the majority of the world's oil, which is controlled by governments [Shah neglects to tell us that those governments were installed by CIA] . . . But they make the most money from oil" (pix).
   
   Shah tells us how Middle East oil came to be. About 200 million years ago, [some evangelicals preposterously say 6 or 9,000 years ago], the Earth had a single super-continent called Pangaea. Shah says around 180 million years ago [scientists say 120 million years ago], that the super-continent began to break into two parts as "a warm shallow sea washed just above the equator, splitting the continent that had previously covered the earth into two major subcontinents, Laurasia and Gondwanaland"(pxx). This sea, called the Tethys, produced a sediment over the course of 100 million years that eventually became oil when the Tethys eventually dried up. Shah says "Those sunken sea bottoms of the Tethys now contain about two-thirds of the world's oil"(pxx). Actually, Russia has more oil in hard-to-reach reserves than all the Arab countries put together, which is why the notorious state terrorist Daddy Bush made friends with them back in 1989.
   
   In Chapters one and two, Shah explains how the first World War demonstrated the need for oil to the warring `civilized' countries - "securing access to oil was crucial to maintaining power"(p14). World War II proved the need for oil and the British partnered with the Yanks to maintain global hegemony. America, ruled by oil-rich elites who pulled the government's strings, jumped at the opportunity to provide the brawn to British empire. Shah says "Arrangements were duly made with the British" (p14). Britain kept Iranian oil, the U.S. and U.K. shared Iraqi and Kuwaiti oil, and Sa'udi oil from Arabia would be U.S. oil.
   
   On Middle East conflict, Shah writes "When Britain pulled out of colonial Palestine in 1948, it had handed power over much of the country to the minority [immigrant] Jewish population [the freed victims of Hitler's concentration camps in Germany] (p20). Shah doesn't tell us why Britain had to do this - because of Zionist terrorist attacks in England or that the British government was so infiltrated with Zionists that the Zionists knew of British peacekeeping plans for Palestine before the British troops in Palestine knew of them, and therefore were ineffective at keeping peace. But really, giving Palestine to the Zionists was a deal hatched by Rothschild with the British government long before and was why Ned Lawrence of Arabia was later assassinated. But Shah does recognize that oil politics left the Middle East "mired in dispossession and conflict"(p20). Thus has always been British empire, now American-powered.
   
   In chapter three, Shah shows us that her knowledge of what is happening is largely dependent on reading what others have to say, such as Daniel Yergin and Greenpeace. She writes "The second `oil shock' arrived in 1979 when Islamic fundamentalists overthrew the Shah of Iran" (p31). Shah neglects to inform us that CIA had a back-up plan in the form of Ayatollah Khomeini who was stashed in France until needed. According to Le Monde, Iranians reacted predictably to intentionally leaked CIA reports that CIA was going to reinstall Shah Pahlevi as the Hitlerite dictator of Iran. After hearing this, CIA personnel were taken hostage in Teheran and CIA was told that they would swap the hostages for Shah Pahlevi. Pahlevi, who came to America for medical treatment and whose presence touched off a wave of unreported terrorist attacks against military bases in America by Iranian students, died and Khomeini was then moved into the void in Iran to trick the populace with his false anti-American rhetoric. Khomeini successfully took over and oil continued to flow to Europe and Japan, while his military was covertly supplied by America, his internal enemies massacred by the tens of thousands, his F-4 fighters provided AWAC support against Iraqi MIGs during the Iran-Iraq War, and U.S. surveillance stations were maintained along the Iranian-Soviet border.
   
   Similarly, Shah does not know what really happened in Iraq either. She writes: "In August 1990, the wrath of the Carter Doctrine fell upon Iraq when it attempted to annex neighboring oil-rich Kuwait . . . [and Daddy Bush] responded with deadly force, followed by a regime of sanctions and years of aerial bombings" (p37) Shah doesn't appear to understand that the rulers of Iraq and Iran were both installed by CIA and both maintained by the U.S. government. `War is the health of the State' and explains why war strengthened the dictatorships in these Middle East countries. Kuwait was a problem to the West, funding the reIslamization of Bosnia - Sarejevo was not allowed to host the Winter Olympics to have them turn around and become Islamic (before you know it, they'll stop paying interest because Islam prohibits it, and the Western bankers depend on interest). Saddam was given the U.S. go-ahead to attack Kuwait in retaliation for Kuwait's alleged slant-drilling of Iraqi oil. After Saddam sent his conscripted troops of internal dissidents into Kuwait, the U.S. killed them for Saddam. This solved the problem of growing numbers of internal dissidents since the cessation of war between Iran and Iraq where the dictators had previously killed each other's internal dissidents conscripted into the military. Shah is correct about the 130 consecutive months of U.S. and British bombings after that and all during the Clinton presidency and Bush Junior presidency up to the current invasion and occupation of Iraq. If the sham democracy that the U.K. and U.S. have installed there doesn't take root, Saddam is kept alive and healthy on the sidelines in case his dictatorship is needed again as a last resort.
   
   Shah concludes by warning of the end of oil's story. Here again she shows that some participant observation would help to inform her analysis rather than relying on what wordpushers are churning out - thousands of books are funded by CIA in the name of disinformation, and she should find out for herself what is going on rather than reading their rubbish. What is happening is that the corporations have figured out that oil can be grown from soybeans and other farm products rather than be pumped from finite reserves beneath the earth. So mega-farms owned by corporations are next at the expense of family farms. Grease powered cars, trucks, and tractors are next and the new lords will be "artificial persons" aka `corporations'. The new aristocracy will buy and merge the family farms into vast acreages manned by sharecroppers while the corporate owners and CEOs live as absentee landlords in their plush private compounds - much as we see today after large chunks of India were carved up by the British and made into a British creation called "Pakistan", where vast mega-farms are worked by sharecroppers while the Ox-bridge elites wallow in luxury in Islamabad. Today's American property owner finds himself, once again, as a serf to a feudal "corporate" master who will take their land to grow oil. That is the future of oil.



4. I highly recommend this book to everyone.
   First Ms. Shah's extensive research and cross-referencing is impressive and adds a lot of credibility to the work.
   Second, for someone tackling an issue as polarizing and sensitive as oil, Ms. Shah presents a remarkably cool tone through the book, although I think her opinions are clear. The book does not antagonize anyone, as some activisty books tend to do.
   What I also loved about this book was that it gave comprehensive treatment to the story of oil, focusing not just on the environment, or on geopolitics, or on capitalism, rather addressing each in turn, which made it tremendously educational and multi-dimensional.
   Ultimately I would judge the book by its impact on me. And I can safely say that ever since I read "Crude" I've been looking at the world a little differently - and that for an author is a remarkable achievement.



5. I enjoyed Sonia Shah's book "Crude, The Story of Oil." Is she correct? I don't know, but this is an interesting book and a small book of only 229 pages. It's a quick read. The problem with "peak oil" books is that they are too political and are always trying to blame someone or some political party, and even blame history. How do we know what is true is true? How does Sonia Shah know? I found it and interesting and worth the price if you buy it used. Regards, Keith Renick, Saudi Aramco Oil, Retired

No comments about International Petroleum Accounting.

2 comments about Treasure Hunting for Fun and Profit (Treasure Hunting Text).

1. The reason for the low rating is because this book is a repeat of Mr Garrett's book,"Let's Talk Treasure Hunting" which was first printed in 1992. Chapters and wording of "Treasure Hunting for Fun and Profit is practically identical. If you buy either book, there is no need to buy the other. These books have some information on the technics of metal detecting, but is more focused in the end in describing the kind of metal detector to use which is the Garrett detector...which is a great metal detector!



2. In the hobby of metal detecting the changes come in use of better technology and understanding and interpreting how these technological advances impact the results in the field.
   With more than thirty years of practice in the hobby of metal detecting I have often read these basic princples as espoused by Charles Garrett and in truth they are always worth repeating. There is little advantage to investing in a top end metal detector or any metal detector for that matter if you do not understand and practice the techniques necessary to provide optimum results.
   This book repeats these fundamentals in relation to modern equipment. Nothing more and nothing less. The author does not pretend or imply that these topics have not been previously touched upon in other books.
   This book has tremendous value for the novice treasure hunter and provides updated reference to the seasoned metal detector user.

5 comments about The Age of Oil: The Mythology, History, and Future of the World's Most Controversial Resource.

1. This book is a sustained and viscous attack on the "Peak Oil" crowd led by Campbell, Deffeyes and Simmons. They claim that we are at or near the peak in world oil production and alternatives will not be available soon enough to prevent a bidding war for declining supplies.
   
   Magueri's incessantly attacks them page after page using terms such as "pseudo-science" "myth" and "doomsayers." Magueri sets up the straw man "are we running out of oil" and fails to adequately address the question "when will world oil production peak?" Magueri uncritically accepts the optimistic claims of Saudi Arabia, the USGS and CERA. Magueri says the 30% of the world's sedimentary basins are unexplored but does not name any such basin. He seems ignorant of the science of petroleum geology.
   
   World oil production is going to be less in 2006 than 2005. If in a few years it is clear that we were past the peak when this book was published then all will agree that Magueri is a laughable, ingnorant and arrogant fool.



2. great background history to today's strategic events in Middle East



3. "Oil is the most vital resource of our time" - an attention-getting introduction to Maugeri's "The Age of Oil"
   
   The first section covers the history of oil, beginning with Drake's discovery, Rockefeller's monopoly on refining and transportation, the entry of other competitors (Russia, Texas, Mexico, Venezuela), Churchill's leadership in converting the British Navy and then create a protected source in Persia, new uses (transportation, plastics) and the fading of its original attraction (lighting), the development of new industries dependent on oil use (autos, motels, gas stations), Texas' regulations providing a model for OPEC, new Arab producers, etc., with a periodic sprinkling of former warnings that we soon would run out. Then follows the '73 oil embargo, the '79 second shock (Iranian Revolution + rebellion in Venezuela + Soviet invasion of Afghanistan + the Iran/Iraq War), the '96 counter-shock caused by the Saudi decision to regain their market share (beaten down by considerable cheating among OPEC members; not motivated by Reagan's efforts to beat down the Soviets, though their lowered internal prices did not even cover production costs and the Saudi action sharply reduced their external earnings), and Hussein's '90 invasion of Kuwait (U.S. response was driven by fear he would go on to Saudi Arabia).
   
   Maugeri also informs readers that Russia's shock therapy privatization failed due to the absence of a legal framework for the process, and the existing deep-rooted corruption within the system. The result was a redistribution of Russia's riches (including oil) into the hands of the elite, further acerbated by a "loans-for-shares" scheme by the oligarchs to prop up Yeltsin through the next election (Russia's failure to repay them was followed by rigged auctions that further enhanced the new capitalists' riches).
   
   Ensuing negative production projections were caused more by disruption in Venezuela, Russia and Iraq, terrorism threats, oil companies' focus on buy-backs instead of exploration, oil company write-downs of reserves (due to the financial difficulty in developing, and in some cases even accessing them), China's surging use, and the Katrina disruption. A unique Maugeri contribution is his pointing out that environmentalists concerns also led to an exaggerated appearance of shortage due to special increased demand for the lighter, sweeter crudes most quoted in the media.
   
   "The Age of Oil" then moves to the question "Are We Running Out of Oil?" Maugeri thinks not, again citing the numerous prior cries of impending doom. Rationale offered include Hubbard's theory applying ONLY to areas already well-explored (the U.S.), a new Russia theory disconnecting oil creation from organic sources - thus broadening its possible locations, improved recovery methods, inadequate exploration of large Middle East areas (the nations involved choosing instead to focus on developing existing fields - some of which still use 40+ year-old equipment), examples where prior recovery estimates proved wildly short (eg. Kern County, CA), neglect of alternative sources (shale oil, tar sands, ultra-heavy oils), and the potential improved efficiency from switching users to diesel.
   
   Bottom-Line: Maugeri may well be correct in believing that oil doomsayers are overly pessimistic, especially given their track record. On the other hand, I'm also reminded of the hypochondriac who constantly woke up thinking he was dying - one day he was right! Finally, concern for global warming may make questions about oil reserves irrelevant!



4. This book is worth reading: a broad and experienced view of the history of the energy industry; well-written and (especially considering the position of the writer as an officer of a major international oil company) remarkably objective in describing the rivalries of independents vs. majors and private companies vs. state companies. It is a worthy up-date to Daniel Yergin's monumental work, The Prize.



5. This was a really interesting book to read. It is well written, so even when he is giving the detailed history, it is easy to read. The book is non-political in my opinion. I was hoping for greater confirmation that we are not any where near peak oil. He seems to have this opinon (that there is plenty of oil) but does not really focus on it. He pretty much deals with the facts and lets you make your own conclusions. Many of the negative opinions seem to be from the "oil panic" crowd that does not want to have their point of view challenged.
   The book is very educational and very informative. You learn that we are not likely to run out of oil any time soon, that we have been through many oil cylcles with extremely high prices, and the market always has stabilized.
   Worth your time to read.

1 comments about A Generalized Approach To Primary Hydrocarbon Recovery Of Petroleum Exploration & Production (Handbook of Petroleum Exploration and Production).

1. This is a great book for reservoir engineers. Very clear and complete. A must in every PE library

5 comments about Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives, and Corporate Greed in Iraq.

1. This books deserves a Pulitzer Prize for plugging the huge gap in our knowledge of why the spectacular military triumph was succeeded by the even more spectacular reconstruction fiasco that quickly alienated average Iraqis. The press has focused mostly on the daily casualty counts and on the political maneuvering among Iraqi religious and secular leaders. Left unreported has been the story of why the mainstream Iraqi population that was so hopeful after the US toppled Saddam has turned against us in despair. Miller's investigation and reporting skills are remarkable in detailing so much of what went wrong with virtually every aspect of the occupation. Much of the blame is attributable to the unprecedented reliance on profit-driven private sector firms to carry out public policy of rebuilding Iraq -- which was doomed to failure because normal marke forces don't exist to control behavior of corporations left to run amok. Absolute must reading for anyone trying to understand how any American military success can be rapidly and overwhelmingly squandered by failure to plan for all that must follow.



2. This book is a devastating indictment of the US intervention in Iraq. For the author, the clearest signal of the failure of the reconstruction program is the unabated violence.
   The second Iraq war created a paradise for cynical war profiteers, while the Iraqi population was left in the cold. The aid packages were in fact remarkable programs of US domestic handouts and corporate welfare, profiting nearly only to retired Republican operatives, US businessmen and dubious Iraqi exiles with a double agenda.
   The profiteers organized an orgy of greed on profit guaranteed contracts. Control was inexistent, e.g., $ 9 billion out of the $ 20 billion of the Iraq Development Fund disappeared without a trace (mind-boggling!). Insurance companies sold mouth watering policies for labor protection. Foreign private security firms played a leading role in the daily violence in Iraq. The contractors hired slave laborers in order to maximize their profits.
   The newly installed Iraqi government was not a shade better, e.g., its Defense Ministry misspent or `lost' $ 1.3 billion in its first year in office.
   
   The author illustrates poignantly his terribly shocking exposé with concrete examples of personal tragedies, like the suicide of Col. Ted Westhusing, or the murder by his kidnappers of a 19 year old Nepalese, who paid a broker's fee of $ 3000 for a $ 200 per month job in Iraq.
   
   Miller's book shows also the disastrous effect the UN sanctions had on the Iraqis under Saddam (one schoolbook for every six children).
   Its final conclusion is that the Iraqi people didn't receive `blood money' - the payment of compensation by an attacker to the family members of dead or injured loved ones. Instead, they inherited a living standard below the `Saddam' level (no power, no water, no sewage treatment).
   
   This book with its formidable title is a must read for all those interested in world current affairs.



3. While the matters in this book have long been alluded to in congressional hearing and the media. this is the first book to gather it up in one volume. It shows an inept government unable to do what was done almost 60 years earlier. Admittedly, the culture and the circumstances were different but the resources were greater. The rampant graft and lack of aggressive action by those in charge, including contractors, is chilling. Have we as a nation state sunk so low?
   
   It presents a thoughtful picture of the risk encountered daily by many employees of contractors. This is the first writing that describes the risk imposed on the professional truckers serving in Iraq. No other writer spells it out so vividly.
   
   This book raises more questions than it supplies answers. Of course, that was the purpose of the book.



4. .. prevent me from typing what I really want to say. That would be a string of obscenities that would get me kicked off Amazon.
   
   This book offers the proof that this whole fiasco of a "war" was designed to rob the Treasury of the United States.



5. I recommend you read this book if you are interested in government contingency contracting or the issues impeding the Iraqi reconstruction. Mr. Miller shared insight about events and actions that is not gained from the course work on government contracting. His book also shared difficult it is to effect the Iraqi reconstruction. I think Mr. Miller writes this book from an apolitical space, neither left or right. Finally, the book is informative and entertaining. I can't wait for his next book on the subject.

1 comments about Introduction to Oil Company Financial Analysis.

1. The old warning Buyer Beware could not have been more apt for this book. Discussion of oil company analysis is limited to about two chapters - chapters 7 and 8. Beyond that this book is more of a primer on valuation in general with discussion on things like CAPM, Gordon growth model, Dow Theory, Random Walk, Efficient Markets etc. Then there is a liberal discussion on M&A Law in the US. In my own mind, central to oil company analysis is the valuation of reserves - a topic that requires a full book. This book devotes exactly 22 pages to this topic. Even here, the book is full of excel spreadsheet snapshots and there is no discussion of how certain items were derived or calculated and it is left to the reader to calculate. When dealing with a complicated issue and especially when one is paying good money for a book, one would expect some hand-holding. There is no discussion on the specific components of Finding and Development (F&D) costs, how to smooth the lumpiness of annual F&D costs, and how to derive F&D costs from company filings. There is no discussion on issues such as "risking" reserves and exactly what the term means and how one goes about attributing value to resource potential. On the refining side, there is no discussion on refining margins and their drivers. The only thing of interest on the refining side is a discussion of the Nelson complexity index. Other than that the book is pretty much useless. If you think you can start analyzing oil and gas companies using this book, you are in for a rude shock. If you are looking to pick up on valuation concepts, then this book may be alright but there are clearly much better books for this out there. The authors are probably under the impression that quoting examples exclusively from oil and gas companies makes a book an authoritative treatise on oil and gas companies. This, as we all know, is wrong-headed. Barring chapters 7 and 8, you could easily substitute examples from technology companies and call this "Technology Company Financial Analysis". My advice...Don't Buy.

No comments about Well Logging and Formation Evaluation (Gulf Drilling Guides).

5 comments about The Halliburton Agenda: The Politics of Oil and Money.

1. Did I get the wrong book from Amazon.com? The book is advertised to be a book about Cheney and Halliburton - it is about Halliburton but not Cheney. For example, pictures of Cheney appear on both the front and back covers of the book jacket. But that is very misleading. The book is not about Cheney per se; there are in fact only a dozen or so pages dealing with Cheney near the end of the book and he plays only a minor role; he finally appears on page 191 of the 237 added seemingly as an afterthought. Surprisingly, the dominant politician in the book is the former president and Texas native Lyndon Baines Johnson or LBJ. By my estimate and it is confirmed by looking at the index, LBJ takes up three times as much space in the book as Cheney, and furthermore he plays a much more important role in setting any "agenda" at Brown & Root - a subsidiary of Halliburton. Even though the book even if falsely promoted it is still an interesting read about two old US companies and their eventual merger; but at just 237 pages long in medium font is not a 5 star effort, just 3.5 stars, maybe only 3 stars at best.
   
   The first company described is the oil well services company Halliburton started in approximately 1920 by Erle Halliburton in Oklahoma. Erle Halliburton died in 1957 leaving a successful and financially strong and independent business enterprise as his legacy. The second company is Brown & Root (B & R) that developed from being a Texas road construction company that was started around 1917 to become a major defense contractor. The business grew through political connections and after many decades B & R had become the largest engineering and construction company in the USA, boosted by the Vietnam war effort, and fed by a series of domestic and foreign construction and defense contracts stretching around the globe.
   
   The book tells (very briefly) how these companies developed, merged in 1962 with R & B being bought by Halliburton, and how they became a major defense contractor. It also contains many side stories such as the influence of the rising political star LBJ in Texas, dam construction, back room operators such as A.J.Wirtz, political intrigue, the milking of Roosevelt's New Deal money, navy boat building, the fall of Leland Olds who was a bureaucrat blocking their expansion, the Johnson Space Center contract, Vietnam contracts, the LOGCAP contract, the Dresser merger, Henry Waxman's congressional charges against Halliburton and the sole sourcing, etc. Cheney appears near the end of the book and I did learn that Cheney flunked out of Yale and was arrested twice for DWI in his youth. There are a number of insights and comments on the current contracts to Halliburton. But since Halliburton had the LOGCAP contract before Cheney, it seems to me that Cheney played no more a dramatic role - I suspect - than any other good CEO or "rainmaker" might have played at Halliburton to boost its revenues.
   
   As a book I would say it rates just 3 or 4 stars since as the author acknowledges that he uses and number of existing books such as "Erle P. Halliburton: Genius with Cement" and other publications, and most of the book is about the older history - as I said Cheney does not even appear until page 191 out of 237. So even when he appears the information is scant. Having said that it is clear the author has done extensive research, he has a nice reference section for further reading, he brings the story together, but overall it seems like a short collection of historical facts and tidbits. As it stands, it is more of a "gateway" book or introduction and it would have been a 5 star book if it was about 400-500 pages long and was more complete. But some of the references and 40 pages of notes at the back are worth a follow up read.



2. Author Dan Briody has written a book that goes beyond pundit finger-pointing over the controversial "no-bid" contracts relationship between Halliburton and Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a serious examination of the high-octane blend of profit and politics that fuels the Bush administration's agenda. Briody begins with an extensive history of two Texas companies, Halliburton and Brown & Root (now KBR). He deftly portrays how they made their fortunes despite Great Depression hardships, World War II and political intrigues aplenty. Briody pulls no punches while maintaining a reportorial (if not totally objective) tone, although people who hold different political views might argue with his opinions and conclusions. We recommend this saga to anyone looking for a deeper understanding of the ongoing tryst between corporate America and its politicians. While this book is not presented as a smoking gun, it portrays insider politics that smolder like an oil fire you can't quite extinguish, leaving sort of an ugly haze.



3. I actually enjoyed his book about Carlyle and it's the reason I bought this book. But there should have been another 300 pages. It did a pretty good job of describing the origins of Halliburton and Brown and Root and described the relationship both Brown and Root and later the combined company had with Lyndon Johnson. But it's other political relationships of the time were not fleshed out, and only briefly mentioned. Basically anything about the companies histories after the late 1950s was brief and I felt shortchanged once I got to this part of the book. (3/4 of the way into it) The change of name to Kellog, Brown and Root was not mentioned, nor were contracts such as Guantanomo or the base on Diego Garcia which sounds to me like it could have warranted quite some ink. Also Kellog, Brown and Root's bankruptcy was glossed over leaving me wondering what the story is on this. The asbestos issue was only briefly mentioned, and Cheney's attempts to reduce these losses by changing the laws wasn't mentioned at all. Information about the companies contracts in Iraq is almost non-existant and the reputed contracts the Company did with countries in Cheney's era under US sanctions (ie Iran) by diverting the contracts via it's overseas subsidiaries gets not even a fraction of a page.
   
   Basically if you after information on these companies after 1962 you're better off researching it on the internet.



4. It was a good read. Pretty scary stuff. As far as Chaney goes, the only thing that would have been more of a surprise would have been that he was identified as one of the founding members of the Log Cabin Republicans but for someone who spends so much time at undisclosed locations, stranger things could happen.
   
   Bud Brown



5. Actually, there was nothing particularly shocking. The scandal of Halliburton's involvement in Iraq is pretty obvious, and the author adds no information about that. I would guess the more scandalous aspects will come out in the future. When it is clear that we went to war solely so that Halliburton could have the pipeline work, then I'll be mildly perturbed, but not surprised. There must after all have been some real reason.
   
   If one is looking for dirt on Cheney, there really isn't much. He is completely overshadowed in this book by LBJ, Herman Brown, Alvin Wirtz and others, and actually, Robert Caro's books on LBJ are much more enthralling accounts of all that. Still, it's fun to read about these tough Texas mothers with their whiskey and bags full of hundred dollar bills. In fact, now that I think about it I highly recommend all of Caro's books about LBJ.
   
   Coming back to this one, it kind of fizzles out. Halliburton and Brown & Root have interesting histories. People who naively suppose that modern day public officials are honest and that their words are related to their motives in any way may be alarmed, but I would guess that most people reading this book in the first place aren't expecting a tale gleaming with moral gems. And Cheney as a rogue is a humorless dud. The most surprising thing I learned about him was that he had his first heart attack at 37!

1 comments about Principles of Mineral Processing.

1. A very comprehensive reference book on the development and wizardry of separating and collecting "Things dug out of the Earth"(Descartes). It deals with older and modern methods, the evolution of equipment and plant and also typical individual integrated processes.
   The clear explanations are most useful for those interested in this somewhat obscure subject but it is an invaluable reference book for the desk of those involved in ore separation plant operation or design.//