Ebook: Crude reality: petroleum in world history

Considers the history of petroleum's engineering, production, refining, and consumption, and synthesizes recent scholarship linking overreliance on the resource to environmental degradation and economic disparity.;Introduction: Beginning as black goo -- pt. 1. Cultural exchange, 1750-1890 -- Infrastructure: Drilling for saltwater -- From black goo to black gold -- Crossing borders to increase supply -- Modeling big oil -- Infrastructure: Shipping crude throughout the globe -- pt. 2. Going mobile, 1890-1960 -- Infrastructure: Pumping gas -- Hitting the road -- Marching for petroleum : supply and weapons -- Infrastructure: "Want fries with that?" -- pt. 3. The globalization of petroleum dominance, 1960-present -- Infrastructure: Big science helps big oil -- Consuming cultures -- To have and have not -- Infrastructure: NYMEX and the commodity of crude -- pt. 4. Living with limits and energy transitions, 1980-present -- Infrastructure: Climate change reveals a new world order -- "Peak oil," climate change, and petroleum under siege -- Portrait of addiction : U.S. petroleum use -- Epilogue: Resource curse : time for an oil change? -- Chronology of petroleum in world history -- Chronology of spills.