Reviews
Business Week
"Stories of how companies such as Chevron and ExxonMobil gained access to the huge oil fields of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan have leaked out in dribs and drabs, but now Steve LeVine has gathered the whole Wild East tale in one canny and entertaining book."
Robert Legvold, Foreign Affairs
"... the treat is in the roiling tale of the gambles, bravado, and maneuvering of the dealmakers. ... Like a good scenarist, LeVine develops the characters for each segment before proceeding with the plot. For people who liked Michael Douglas in Wall Street, here is an even more subtle and complex movie script."
Conde Nast Portfolio
"The Caspian Sea region’s oil was commercialized in 1886, when Zeynalabdin Tagiyev—known as the Azerbaijani Eunuch Maker—struck a gusher that spewed more crude into the sea than all the world’s functional wells were producing at the time. As LeVine’s engaging account details, the area has since been discovered, plundered, and forgotten time and again. But now, with the opening of the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline in spring 2006, the Caspian may well be the key to our energy independence from the Middle East. A former Wall Street Journal writer, LeVine brings this all alive by introducing us to regional strongmen, American fixers, Western oil-company executives, and shady energy traders who, since the breakup of the Soviet empire, have jostled for Central Asia’s enormous oil prize while Mother Russia looms menacingly in the background. The deft political portrait of this strategic, volatile area makes the book essential reading, but it’s LeVine’s fine writing that makes it a pleasure."
Robert M. Cutler, Middle East Journal (subscription required)
"Unlike the genre of journalist travelogues to which the mass market has grown accustomed since at least the mid-1970s, LeVine’s book represents a primary historical source, in some ways unique. I do not believe, for example, that the John Deuss story concerning the Caspian Pipeline Corporation (CPC) pipeline, built to take oil from the Tengiz in Kazakhstan across southern Russia to the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk, has been told before, and certainly not in such detail. ...
"This is not a book that will put you to sleep at night. LeVine covers a lot of territory here, not just international geopolitics but also the transformation of the global energy industry itself. He has an eye for the telling detail, and this story upon layered story contains many revealing details."
The Christian Science Monitor
"When the Soviet Union collapsed, for many observers there was no bigger question than this: What happens to the oil? The race to tap the region's rich reserves is told in full and colorful detail by former Wall Street Journal correspondent Steve LeVine in The Oil and the Glory: The Pursuit of Empire and Fortune on the Caspian Sea. Superpowers, big oil, politics, human greed and exotic locale come together here in LeVine's skillful recitation."
San Francisco Chronicle
"Chance meetings on planes, Connecticut mansions, CIA debriefings, Caribbean yacht cruises, Gulfstream jets - all these are set pieces in LeVine's account of how, long before it was official policy, Western oilmen "instinctively grasped the essence of détente" with the Evil Empire, and found ways to open it up for business."
Registan.Net
"LeVine was a regional correspondent for The New York Times and the Almaty bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal. Such a position gave him key access to many of the players he describes — from the hilariously pompous middlemen like James Giffen to heads of state like Nursultan Nazarbayev — and a bracing, spellbinding narrative full of intrigue to tie together an incredibly complex story."
"Stories of how companies such as Chevron and ExxonMobil gained access to the huge oil fields of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan have leaked out in dribs and drabs, but now Steve LeVine has gathered the whole Wild East tale in one canny and entertaining book."
Robert Legvold, Foreign Affairs
"... the treat is in the roiling tale of the gambles, bravado, and maneuvering of the dealmakers. ... Like a good scenarist, LeVine develops the characters for each segment before proceeding with the plot. For people who liked Michael Douglas in Wall Street, here is an even more subtle and complex movie script."
Conde Nast Portfolio
"The Caspian Sea region’s oil was commercialized in 1886, when Zeynalabdin Tagiyev—known as the Azerbaijani Eunuch Maker—struck a gusher that spewed more crude into the sea than all the world’s functional wells were producing at the time. As LeVine’s engaging account details, the area has since been discovered, plundered, and forgotten time and again. But now, with the opening of the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline in spring 2006, the Caspian may well be the key to our energy independence from the Middle East. A former Wall Street Journal writer, LeVine brings this all alive by introducing us to regional strongmen, American fixers, Western oil-company executives, and shady energy traders who, since the breakup of the Soviet empire, have jostled for Central Asia’s enormous oil prize while Mother Russia looms menacingly in the background. The deft political portrait of this strategic, volatile area makes the book essential reading, but it’s LeVine’s fine writing that makes it a pleasure."
Robert M. Cutler, Middle East Journal (subscription required)
"Unlike the genre of journalist travelogues to which the mass market has grown accustomed since at least the mid-1970s, LeVine’s book represents a primary historical source, in some ways unique. I do not believe, for example, that the John Deuss story concerning the Caspian Pipeline Corporation (CPC) pipeline, built to take oil from the Tengiz in Kazakhstan across southern Russia to the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk, has been told before, and certainly not in such detail. ...
"This is not a book that will put you to sleep at night. LeVine covers a lot of territory here, not just international geopolitics but also the transformation of the global energy industry itself. He has an eye for the telling detail, and this story upon layered story contains many revealing details."
The Christian Science Monitor
"When the Soviet Union collapsed, for many observers there was no bigger question than this: What happens to the oil? The race to tap the region's rich reserves is told in full and colorful detail by former Wall Street Journal correspondent Steve LeVine in The Oil and the Glory: The Pursuit of Empire and Fortune on the Caspian Sea. Superpowers, big oil, politics, human greed and exotic locale come together here in LeVine's skillful recitation."
San Francisco Chronicle
"Chance meetings on planes, Connecticut mansions, CIA debriefings, Caribbean yacht cruises, Gulfstream jets - all these are set pieces in LeVine's account of how, long before it was official policy, Western oilmen "instinctively grasped the essence of détente" with the Evil Empire, and found ways to open it up for business."
Registan.Net
"LeVine was a regional correspondent for The New York Times and the Almaty bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal. Such a position gave him key access to many of the players he describes — from the hilariously pompous middlemen like James Giffen to heads of state like Nursultan Nazarbayev — and a bracing, spellbinding narrative full of intrigue to tie together an incredibly complex story."
Labels: azerbaijan, big oil, caspian, kazakhstan, kremlin, oil prices, putin, reviews, russia, steve levine, the oil and the glory, turkmenistan
