McQuaig’s scathing and razor-sharp assaults on fiscal policy (Shooting the Hippo), Free Trade (The Quick and the Dead), and the Canadian tax system (Behind Closed Doors), have won her a legion of dedicated readers. In It’s the Crude, Dude she turns her attention to a truly planetary issue: the cataclysmic effects our addiction to oil is having on our environment and our ability to co-exist in the world.

Nothing could be more urgently relevant.

Since its emergence as the first truly global industry in the early twentieth century, Big Oil has wielded more power than most governments over world politics and the global economy. And now, more than ever, it has a champion in U.S. President George W. Bush, whose Republican party received millions of dollars in donations from the oil industry and whose administration is stacked with former oil executives, including its all-powerful vice-president.

And yet the idea that the U.S. invaded Iraq to secure this strategically important and highly valuable resource is strangely taboo in the mainstream media. It is practically shouted down whenever mentioned. Instead, we are asked to believe that the U.S. invaded Iraq for a variety of reasons, none of which has anything whatsoever to do with a desire to gain control over the most lucrative untapped oilfield on earth — even as dwindling worldwide reserves threaten to turn competition for crude into the major international battle of the future.

In the end, that conflict may be dwarfed by another even more momentous disaster-in-waiting. Over the past two decades, it has become clear that the planet is getting warmer, and that emissions from fossil fuels are largely to blame. The scientific consensus on this — developed in the most comprehensive international peer-review process ever undertaken — is overwhelming. As surely as smoking causes cancer, gas-guzzling SUVs are hurrying us towards global climate change. In the face of this potentially devastating threat, the world has moved with unprecedented speed to try to head off disaster. Only a small group is resisting. But in its ranks are the most powerful corporations on earth, well connected to the most powerful government on earth. The outcome of this titanic struggle — the world versus the oil lobby — will likely determine nothing less than the future viability of the planet.

McQuaig’s research, analysis, and eye for detail combine to produce a riveting tale about the battle over oil that shapes our times and will determine our future. Readers of all political stripes will find this book provocative and impossible to put down.

REVIEW QUOTES

"With a keen eye and grim wit, McQuaiq's perceptive inquiry into the world's energy system strips away layer after layer of deceit, cynicism, racism, sordid manipulation, violence and aggression, in the dedicated effort to extract every possible ounce of profit and power in a race to the edge of disaster, perhaps beyond. It is an urgent wake-up call that should — that must — be read and acted upon, without delay."
—Noam Chomsky

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Journalist and bestselling author Linda McQuaig has developed a reputation for challenging the establishment. Winner of a National Newspaper Award for uncovering the Patti Starr affair in 1989, she has written for The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, Maclean’s magazine, and the National Post. She now writes a weekly political column on the op-ed page of the Toronto Star.