Introduction

The topic I will be researching is Natural Resources. This topic interests me because it is a very present topic when discussing todays problems in the world. I also am interested in this topic because it seems like something that we will talk about in class, so it will be good to start researching it now. I will be looking at all different aspects of natural resources including problems, advantages, and the future of natural resources. I'm looking for a book that is informative but interesting as well. My first choice is The Future of Oil by Sanjay Patel. I am interested in this topic because it looks at my topic from the economic prospective which is very intriguing to me. I am also interested in the topic of the future of oil which is the core of this book. My fall back book would be The Oil Kings: How the U.S., Iran, and Saudi Arabia Changed the Balance of Power in the Middle East by Andrew Scott Cooper. This book is similar to The Future of Oil  in the sense that they are both based around oil and the economic aspect of the natural resource debate. These are my top two books because I think that they will have really good information for me to absorb and allow me to create a great presentation at the end of the year.

Book 10: The Oil Kings: How the U.S., Iran, and Saudi Arabia Changed the Balance of Power in the Middle East, By Andrew Scott Cooper, 5 Stars on Amazon

Editorial Review: While America struggles with a recess ion, oil prices soar, revolution rocks the Middle East, European nations risk defaulting on their loans, and the world teeters on the brink of a possible global financial crisis. This is not a description of the present, however, but the 1970s. In The Oil Kings, Andrew Cooper tells the story of how oil came to dominate U.S. domestic and foreign policy. 

Drawing on newly declassified documents and interviews with some of the key figures of the time, Cooper follows the political posturing and backroom maneuvering that led the U.S. to switch to OPEC as its main supplier of oil from the Shah of Iran, a loyal ally and leading customer for American weapons. The subsequent loss of U.S. income destabilized the Iranian economy, while the U.S. embarked on a long relationship with the autocratic Saudi kingdom that continues to this day. 

Brilliantly reported and filled with astonishing revelations—including how close the U.S. came to sending troops into the Persian Gulf to break the Arab oil embargo and how U.S. officials offered to sell nuclear power and nuclear fuel to the Shah—The Oil Kings is the history of an era that we thought we knew, an era whose momentous reverberations still influence events at home and abroad today.

Reader Review: In this well-written, well-researched book about the Shah of Iran's attempts to make himself the new Cyrus, mixed with Richard Nixon's post-Vietnam search for agents of empire by extension and mixed with the Shah and King Faisal squaring off for oil hegemony, the "captain of the USS Titanic," steering the American economy for the iceberg of doing anything to help Mohammad Reza Pahlavi ... was Henry Kissinger.

This included him and Nixon writing a blank check to the Shah for unlimited arms deals, a blank check that Kissinger refused to tell either Ford or Carter about. (Kissinger refused interview requests for this book.)

Others were at fault, too. Nixon himself for writing that blank check, even if on Kissinger's advice. William Simon, for leaning too far the Saudis' way. Don Rumsfeld, whose arrogance 25 years ago under Ford was no less than under Bush.

But at the heart of it all was Henry Kissinger, enabling the Shah's every wrong-sized dream, while being ignorant of the inflation the Shah was inflicting on himself, and the wreckage he was inflicting on the United States, Western Europe and Japan, even while Henry claimed he knew more economics than most of Nixon's economics team.

The Shah might still be in power, or his son, rather, if we had reined him in. (Kissinger also missed the mullahs as the possible source of a revolution, seeing only Commies.) Energy shortages were happening before the first embargo of 1973, but might have been better managed to the benefit of the Shah, Faisal and other Arab oil states and the West, all alike. And, the Israel situation might have been better handled, too.

The book ends soon after Carter's accession, with Faisal dead and the Shah on his way. A sequel would be wonderful.

I learned a fair amount about pre-embargo 1972 energy shortages, which only increased realizing Kissinger was not only a megalomaniac and immoral (see Chile/Allende), but also grossly incompetent.

Faisal comes off well, overall. The Shah? A figure of tragedy, but a self-isolated one, as dictators tend to be.

Why I Chose This Book: I chose this book first and for most because the oil crisis and the Middle East are both very present topics in my house. This book sheds light on both and shows hows the oil crisis truly started. 

Product Info:

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition (September 11, 2012)
• ISBN-10: 9781439155189
• ISBN-13: 978-1439155189

Book 9: The Future of Oil, By Sanjay Patel, 4 Stars on Amazon

Editorial Review: Unless we are able to increase the global oil supply, we face a bleak future of depleting reserves and high energy prices. Since conventional oil reserves are dwindling, we have no alternative but to increasingly rely on unconventional oil, and for political, economic, and environmental reasons, the Canadian oil sands offer the very best unconventional oil we can get. Never before has a book offered an insider s view of this controversial industry. The Future of Oil objectively considers economic necessity and the nature of current technological limitations to arrive at a series of connected and inescapable conclusions. The transition to an age of cleaner energy production is necessary and inevitable, but we cannot yet live without oil. Oil must have a future, or we do not have one, and the oil sands of Canada are the centrepiece of that future. The Future of Oil is a clear, concise, yet complete guide to the Canadian oil sands industry, covering history, the environment, technology, and ethics. It addresses all the main objections to oil sands development that have been posed by journalists, environmentalists, First Nations leaders, and others. The author does not sugarcoat the hard facts, but objectively presents the arguments of oil sands critics and proponents alike. As a result, readers should have a much deeper understanding of all the issues involved, and be able to form their own opinions. The straight-spoken, journalistic style of The Future of Oil will appeal both to a general readership and those working in the oil sands industry, serving as a valuable resource by providing the big picture. Most of all, it offers, for the first time, an insider s view of a crucial energy debate that will be with us for some time to come.

Reader Review: The Future of Oil is a tour de force on the oil sands. Mr. Patel doesn't shy away from controversial subjects and objectively explains the development of the oil sands. He sets the stage by explaining the projected increases in global energy demand and the dramatic reductions in the availability in conventional oil. Furthermore, though we should continue to invest in renewable energy, the technology just isn't ready at the moment. Furthermore, few outsiders would believe the incredible innovations taking place in the oil sands, particularly in the "SAGD" production method. In a debate that is often hysterical and misses point, The Future of Oil offers a calm voice of reason.

Why I Chose This Book: I chose this book because I am very interested in the future of oil because whatever happens in the future of oil will change our world drastically. 

Product Info: 

• Paperback: 248 pages
• Publisher: CreatiVentures (February 13, 2013)
• ISBN-10: 818836018X
• ISBN-13: 978-8188360185

Book 8: The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power, By Daniel Yergin, 4.5 Stars on Amazon

Editorial Review: Deemed "the best history of oil ever written" by Business Week and with more than 300,000 copies in print, Daniel Yergin’s Pulitzer Prize–winning account of the global pursuit of oil, money, and power has been extensively updated to address the current energy crisis.

Reader Review: The Prize is one of the best books I've ever read. I wish I could give it a couple of bonus stars in my rating here.

You'd really be selling this book short to think of it just as a history of oil, the oil business, and oil politics in the middle east. Even that would have been an ambitious book but Yergin makes it so much more. It honestly is a thorough history of the entire 20th century (sans the 90s) viewed through the perspective of the oil industry.

As each chapter, era, decade, and war unfolds in Yergin's story, you'll gain a much better understanding of the roots of many of the US public's stances on big business, anti-trust legislation, and other pivotal issues of the last 100 years. You'll see how pivotal energy resources were in shaping the planning and rationale for 2 world wars and how the ready availability or lack of oil played as much of a role in winning and losing those wars as did battlefield strategies and the valor of the millions of soldiers involved. You'll see the role oil and energy played in the final collapse of the great imperial powers.

Probably most relevant to 2007, the lessons Yergin teaches about middle east history, the changing power roles the evolved in the last 50-60 years as the power shifted from the oil companies to the oil producing countries. Tracing the roots of nationalization of oil production in Mexico and Venezuela is a great stepping stone to understanding out current relationship with Venezuela but it also properly frames the story of the origins of OPEC and OPEC policies. And it's so important to get a understanding of the power plays, who's who, back room deals, and longstanding rivalries that built and reinforced the animosity that so many in the middle east felt and feel toward the US and other western and oil consuming countries.

It also traces the missteps and failed attempts at alternative energy sources as far back as the turn of the 19th century, including how alternative sources for aviation fuel provided the German Luftwaffe almost enough fuel to keep going in WWII. And it's easy to see how most other western nations have failed miserably to make the alternative fuel investments that might have paid those same kind of dividends.

The history of how many relations between nations were built on the personal charisma and power of individual leaders is also a powerful lesson for the future when you look at what happens to those relationships when the leader falls or is removed from power. Yergin's tracing of the entire story of the rise and exile of the Shah of Iran is must reading as western leaders might all be thinking while middle eastern leaders and families might be in danger of falling to that same fate and what effect that would have on our immediate oil supplies.

Any western reader and especially readers in the US should look at Yergin's perspective on the fall of the British empire as partially a failure to efficiently transition from a coal economy (coal being a resource England was rich in) to an oil economy (oil being scarce in the British empire until the North Sea discoveries at which time it was really to late to matter). When the US oil balance tipped from exporter to importer and as that balance swings even more out of whack, US readers have to be forced to ask themselves, how long can the US sustain as a world power while exporting so many dollars in exchange for oil and even worse, how ill prepared we could be for a scarcity of oil 25, 50, or 70 years from now. The oil producing nations all recognized 50 or more years ago that their oil revenue would only last so long, that there are only so many decades worth of oil to pump out of the ground at a given pace, and that it was in their interest to maximize the revenue from each barrel pumped. The US and other consumers need to make the corollary discovery: that there is only such much oil to be had and we need to maximize the use and benefit out of each barrel pumped.

Fanatically, even though it covers all this ground, all these disparate topics, Yergin's writing is still incredibly readable and the story well put together. It's hard to imagine a history book that is a "page turner" but this one really is.

In short, if you haven't read this, you should. Maybe if every member of the US House and Senate and all the President's advisors would read this, a few light bulbs would turn on (compact fluorescent energy saving bulbs of course) regarding our energy and foreign policies.

Why I Chose This Book: I chose this book because of the hype around it. It was said to be one of the best books on oil ever written. 

Product Info:

• Paperback: 928 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; Reissue edition (December 23, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 1439110123
• ISBN-13: 978-1439110126

Book 7: Oil 101, By Morgan Downey, 5 Stars on Amazon

Editorial Review: OIL 101 is a straightforward guide to oil and an essential read for anyone coming to grips with where oil prices, the economy and society are headed.

In OIL 101, Downey provides the facts one needs to understand oil, from its history and chemistry, to refining, finished products, storage, transportation, alternatives, and how prices are determined every day in global wholesale oil markets and how those markets are connected to prices at the pump.

Reader Review: Oil 101 is a fascinating book. It explains everything I wanted to know about oil.

Over the past few years with rapidly rising and falling oil prices, politicians, TV pundits and market commentators blamed speculators, OPEC, refineries and a host of other seemingly random events. I felt that everyone understood only tiny portions of the oil business. There was no single source which pulled together disparate areas describing oil. Internet searches for oil definitions yielded individual descriptions without an overall context.

Downey's Oil 101 brings all parts of the oil business together in a logical easily understood manner. The sequence of chapters is perfect and the author makes no assumption of prior knowledge. The index is so thorough that I use the book daily as a desk reference.

The chapter on the history of oil is refreshing and is very much worth the price of the book in itself. The book rose my interest to visit the world's first oil well in Oil Creek near Titusville, Pennsylvania where the modern oil industry started in 1859. It was certainly an interesting trip.

The book explains clearly how oil markets operate and oil prices change. The amount of useful information contained in this book is phenomenal. A more important point that I like this book is that the book is very interesting and easy to read. This is exceptional for a highly specialized technical book. I highly recommend Downey's Oil 101.

Why I Chose This Book: I chose this book because oil is a very present topic in todays world and it is connected directly to my topic.

Product Info:

• Hardcover: 452 pages
• Publisher: Wooden Table Press; 1st edition (2009)
• ISBN-10: 9780982039205
• ISBN-13: 978-0982039205

Book 6: Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind, By Brian Fagan, 4 Stars on Amazon

Editorial Review: In Elixir, New York Times bestselling author Brian Fagan tells the story of our most vital resource and how it has shaped our history, from ancient Mesopotamia to the parched present of the Sunbelt. Fagan relates how every human society has been shaped by its relationship to our most essential resource. This sweeping narrative moves across the world, from ancient Greece and Rome, whose mighty aqueducts still supply modern cities, to China, where emperors marshaled armies of laborers in a centuries-long struggle to tame powerful rivers. As the earth's population approaches nine billion and ancient aquifers run dry, we once again remember the importance of this vital resource. To solve the water crises of the future, we may need to adapt the water ethos of our ancestors, captured here in rich detail by Brian Fagan.

Reader Review: Brian Fagan is a storyteller and showman, in person. His book, Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind, does not deliver the same wonder, mystique and humor.* That's perhaps an impossible thing to ask (perhaps the same can be said of my book), but it does give you an idea of the gap that may exist between what we want to read and what we are given to read.

This 350 pp book tells many stories of how people from long-forgotten civilizations managed their water. Nearly all of it takes place before the Industrial Revolution brought powered pumps to the movement of water. What we get, then, are descriptions of how water was managed in "the age of gravity," when water sustainability was a given but human sustainability was not.

Let me drop in this observation at the start: Elixir tells a different story from Solomon's Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization. Solomon narrates the development of water, politics and economics across many cultures. Fagan describes how different civilizations managed their water, without spending too much time tracing impacts and trends. In my notes, I wrote that "Solomon traces grandiose projects across large areas" while "Fagan observes the details of small and (usually) sustainable solutions to local problems."

At least, that's my feeling after reading through it, but that feeling may be affected by the "too many notes" problem: I cannot keep track of so many kings, canal dimensions, and geographies without seeing some patterns. Maybe they were there, but they didn't grab me.

But let's get to some detailed comments:

Fagan provides a deep description of why farmers may be conservative. They have, after all, been trying to control water and grow food for hundreds of generations. We have to respect their conservatism as the result of protecting success amidst multiple opportunities for failure.
Fagan, as an archeologist, has a different view that emphasizes the physical remnants of past civilizations over their (soft, eroded, washed away) cultural institutions. It's hard to reconstruct a legal or economic system from a culture whose language was never written down.
I was very pleased to get a deeper description of the "fall" of Sumeria, which was more about drought than salt (given an extensive -- over extensive? -- irrigation system).
Slave labor is very handy when you want to dig canals and build dams!
One of the more interesting cultural vignettes comes from Fagan's own experience in Tanzania, where the assembled villagers argue and fight over who's to get what share of the water. I found the description of this process -- and the resulting settlement -- to be a compelling observation on the balancing act that takes place over and over in a community where nobody is a winner for long and everyone's voice has a place. In the end, someone gets the water. The tricky part is that everyone needs to accept that fact -- for now.
At the end of Chapter 4, Fagan claims that the Hohokam (of Africa) would be horrified by the water consumption of Phoenix, but I am not so sure. If anything, Elixir provides ample evidence of people pushing supplies to the limit (to the margin), subject to their technology. They are no wiser than us; they merely lacked centrifugal pumps!
Chapter 8 delivers an excellent example: Rulers of the Sassanian empire (220 CE to 650 CE) were able to build huge irrigation works in today's Iraq and Iran, but their push for economies of scale in producing grains undermined the diversification that had protected earlier farmers from over-reliance on a single food source. When instability (and Islam) arrived, the Sassanians fell.
I enjoyed the detailed description of Roman water distribution, especially the observation that outbound pipes from the castellum at the end of an aqueduct were at different levels. The lowest level went to fountains for drinking water. Then came baths and theatres. At the highest level -- and first to get cut if water levels dropped -- were private residences.
Such an equitable system didn't keep rich people from building their own aqueducts, pipes to castella, or punching holes in pipes to bring water to their houses!
I also enjoyed the tale of Chen Hongmou (1696-1771), a Chinese official who understood that investment today would lead to returns tomorrow -- and who also understood that villages should pay for part of the cost of improvements that would soon make them rich.
p 291: "on the day of resurrection, Allah would ignore those who possessed surplus water and withheld it from travelers." This gives you an idea of the moral and legal foundations of the wondrous water works that Muslims constructed across North Africa, Spain and the Middle East.
These skills, on the other hand, were strained by the adoption of water thirsty crops (cotton, sugar) that strained local water supplies -- a problem that persists today in many arid areas.

Fagan ends with an eloquent plea for local sustainability (p. 347):

Humans have managed water successfully for thousands of years... it is the simple and ingenious that often works best -- local water schemes, decisions about sharing and management made by kin, family and small communities. These experiences also teach us that self-sustainability is attainable... Only one thing is certain: Descartes was wrong. We will never master the earth.

Bottom Line: I give this book FOUR stars for its interesting description of "the way it was" and "the way it fell apart" across the centuries. Elixir provides useful context while we ponder the difference between "sustainable" and "imperial overreach."

Why I Chose This Book: I chose this book because I am interested in the topic of water, and this book shows humans relationship with water throughout history.

Product Info:

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Press; Reprint edition (June 5, 2012)
• ISBN-10: 1608193373
• ISBN-13: 978-1608193370

Book 5: Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource, By Marq de Villiers, 4 Stars on Amazon

Editorial Review: In his award-winning book WATER, Marq de Villiers provides an eye-opening account of how we are using, misusing, and abusing our planet's most vital resource. Encompassing ecological, historical, and cultural perspectives, de Villiers reports from hot spots as diverse as China, Las Vegas, and the Middle East, where swelling populations and unchecked development have stressed fresh water supplies nearly beyond remedy. Political struggles for control of water rage around the globe, and rampant pollution daily poses dire ecological theats. With one eye on these looming crises and the other on the history of our dependence on our planet's most precious commodity, de Villiers has crafted a powerful narrative about the lifeblood of civilizations that will be "a wake-up call for concerned citizens, environmentalists, policymakers, and water drinkers everywhere" (Publishers Weekly).

Reader Review: "Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource," by Marq De Villers is a thorough summary of facts and figures pertinent to water allocation and use in the coming century. The topics covered include descriptions of natural supplies, issues surrounding irrigation and pollution, the politics of water, and what the future may hold. If you weren't aware that there are serious problems to be dealt with in water management, this book will serve as a solid introduction. For those of you acquainted with water issues, this information will come as no surprise.
What is surprising, however, is the level-headed, even-handed tone of the book. All too many books written by non-scientists about natural resource use and misuse are filled to the brim with political polemic. De Villiers, however, has simply offered the facts, surrounded by a narrative of travels and experiences with characters from the world of water. He's just as quick to expose the fallacies of the "water miners" as he is to point out the absurdities of "eco-facism." Just the facts, please, and all wrapped into a tidy, enjoyably written bundle.
My only complaints about the book are academically picky. First, the units De Villiers chooses to use for water volumes, while all standard, are not consistent. Often he speaks of cubic meters, while not a page later he is talking of acre-feet. A few times, he even uses units of kilograms. These are generally appropriate to the topic at hand, but a conversion table should be provided in an appendix. Second, the index is not nearly complete enough. For example, while there are many places in the text where the price of water is discussed, the only reference in the index is to "Water Pricing Policies," which is a very short segment on how pricing affects demand. If you wanted to know what price farmers were paying for water in the western US, you're going to have to search page-by-page.
I would recommend this book to everyone except the most jaded water supply professionals. It covers an important topic and is very timely. If you use water, you should read this book.

Why I Chose This Book: Once again I chose this book because I am interested in the topic of water conservation. 

Product Info:

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; 1st Mariner Books Ed edition (July 12, 2001)
• ISBN-10: 0618127445
• ISBN-13: 978-0618127443