Every unhappy oil-producing nation is unhappy in its own way, but all are touched by oil’s power to worsen existing problems and create new ones. Crude World explores the troubled world oil has created–from Saudi Arabia to Iraq, Russia, Nigeria, Venezuela and beyond. The book features warlords in the oil-rich Niger Delta, petro-billionaires in Moscow, Americans in Baghdad, the gesticulations as well as the politics of Hugo Chavez, and officials in Riyadh who avoid uncomfortable questions about Saudi reserves. A journey into the violent twilight of oil, Crude World answers the questions of what we do for oil and what oil does to us.
“Thousands of books about the oil culture exist in English, and thousands more in other languages. Maass’ book is in a class by itself, as he constructs his relentless indictment on a foundation of first-rate reporting and superb writing.” –USA Today
“Powerfully written … His book teaches us an old lesson anew: that the true wealth of nations is not discovered in the ground, but created by the ingenuity and sweat of citizens.” —The New York Times Sunday Book Review
“Riveting and illuminating … A moral reckoning with basic instincts.” —The Nation
“The strength of Crude World, filled with vivid reporting, is that it leaves you no option but to care.” —The Observer
“Peter Maass takes a fascinating, nightmarish journey to the far end of the pipeline. If you want to know the true cost of America’s oil addiction–and even if you don’t–you should read this book.” –Elizabeth Kolbert
“This book is essential reading for these times and for anyone interested in making the right decisions about our energy future.” –Robert Redford
“With the clarity of a hard-boiled investigator and the grace of a fine writer, Peter Maass reveals how oil has cursed the countries that possess it, corrupted those who want it, and wrought havoc on a world addicted to it. Brilliant and compelling.” –Robert Reich
“Getting off oil is a great idea for a lot of reasons, like saving the planet’s climate. But Peter Maass gives us another set of bonuses. If you think drug dealing is a dirty business, then meet the biggest drug of all.” –Bill McKibben
I was born and raised in Los Angeles. In 1983, after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, I went to Brussels as a copy editor for The Wall Street Journal/Europe. I left the Journal in 1985 to write for The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, covering NATO and the European Union. In 1987 I moved to Seoul, South Korea, where I wrote primarily for The Washington Post. After three years in Asia I moved to Budapest to cover Eastern Europe and the Balkans. I spent most of 1992 and 1993 covering the war in Bosnia for the Post.
My first book, Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1996. The book, which chronicled my experiences covering the Bosnian conflict, won The Los Angeles Times Book Prize (for nonfiction) and the Overseas Press Club Book Prize, and was a finalist for several other literary awards. In 1997, after working for a year in Washington as a staff writer for the Post, I left the paper and moved to New York City, where I wrote for The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books and Foreign Policy, among others. In 2001, I reported from Afghanistan and Pakistan about the post-Taliban era, and I reported from Iraq about the 2003 invasion and its aftermath. In 2009, Knopf published my second book, Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil, which was a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 2014, I became a senior editor at The Intercept, a publication of First Look Media.
On the academic side of things, I was a visiting professor at Princeton in 2008, a fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center in 2010, a master class professor at Columbia in 2012 and I was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012.
Contact: peter (AT) petermaass (DOT) com
Twitter: @maassp
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A look at oil’s indelible impact on the countries that produce it and the people who possess it.
Dispatches from the war in Bosnia, published in 1996 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
I am a senior editor at The Intercept. Publications I have written for include The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and The New York Review of Books. My first book was Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War, and my second was Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil. Email petermaass1 at petermaass dot com. I’m @maassp on Twitter.
Every unhappy oil-producing nation is unhappy in its own way, but all are touched by oil’s power to worsen existing problems and create new ones. Crude World explores the troubled world oil has created–from Saudi Arabia to Iraq, Russia, Nigeria, Venezuela and beyond. The book features warlords in the oil-rich Niger Delta, petro-billionaires in Moscow, Americans in Baghdad, the gesticulations as well as the politics of Hugo Chavez, and officials in Riyadh who avoid uncomfortable questions about Saudi reserves. A journey into the violent twilight of oil, Crude World answers the questions of what we do for oil and what oil does to us.
A war correspondent’s montage of images–eerie, grotesque, ironic, angry, absurd. A Serb and Muslim, friends before the war, exchanging gossip via shortwave radio hours before they try to kill each other. The Serbian president coolly denying reports of atrocities witnessed by hundreds. A battlefield doctor performing miracles of surgery without anesthetic. In Sarajevo, drivers without headlights gambling their lives in the darkness of no-man’s-land as children scamper across Sniper Alley. Love Thy Neighbor won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for nonfiction and the Overseas Press Club Book Prize.
On April 9, 2003, American Marines toppled a statue of Saddam Hussein at Firdos Square in Baghdad. Broadcast across the world, the event symbolized what was thought to be an American victory in Iraq. My reconstruction, written with support from ProPublica and the Shorenstein Center, was published in The New Yorker. This section contains documents, photos, videos and links related to the story.
On April 9, 2003, Marines toppled a statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. The event symbolized what was thought to be an American victory in Iraq. This section of my site contains documents, photos and videos related to my New Yorker story about the toppling.
