Oil
A Groundwork Guide
by James Laxer
series edited by Jane Springer
- Commended, Booklist Top 10 Youth Series — Nonfiction
"[The Groundwork Guides] are excellent books, mandatory for school libraries and the increasing body of young people prepared to take ownership of the situations and problems previous generations have left them." — Globe and Mail
Oil, our main source of energy, underlies the world's economy. In the twentieth century its availability and relatively low price allowed for the industrial growth and development of the world's leading economies. The new rapidly developing giants, India and China, want access to the same possibilities. But today we know that cheap, easily accessible oil supplies are dwindling, and we are beginning to recognize the true cost to the world's environment of our profligate use of this form of energy.
As Oil shows, a substantial portion of the world's remaining supply lies in countries whose interests are not identical with those of the major industrial powers.
close this panelAward-winning author James Laxer has written many books, including Stalking the Elephant: My Discovery of America (published by New Press in the US as Discovering America) and The Border: Canada, the U.S. and Dispatches from the Forty-ninth Parallel. James Laxer appears regularly on television discussions of issues of the day. He was the host and co-author of Reckoning, a prize-winning series of films on the global economy produced by the National Film Board of Canada. James Laxer is a professor of political science at York University in Toronto.
Jane Springer is the author of Genocide, part of the Groundwork Guides series for which she is also the series editor. She is a consultant in international development and has lived and worked in Mozambique and India. She is the author of Listen to Us: The World's Working Children and translator of the Portuguese-language books Nest Egg and Tales from the Amazon. Jane Springer lives in Toronto.
close this panel...[Oil] will offer readers who have a serious interest in the topic an enlightening industrial history...
The little paperback books in this series cover an unexpected amount of material and provide and in-depth overview of the subjects related to contemporary political and social issues. The writing style is easy to comprehend, and the knowledge gained by the reader in a short time is surprising.
