Blowout: corrupted democracy, rogue state Russia, and the richest, most destructive industry on Earth
(Book on CD)

Rachel Maddow offers a dark, serpentine, riveting tour of the unimaginably lucrative and corrupt oil and gas industry. With her trademark black humor, Maddow takes us on a switchback journey around the globe, from Oklahoma City to Siberia to Equatorial Guinea, exposing the greed and incompetence of Big Oil and Gas. She shows how Russia's rich reserves of crude have, paradoxically, stunted its growth, forcing Putin to maintain his power by spreading Russia's rot into its rivals, its neighbors, the United States, and the West's most important alliances. Chevron, BP, and a host of other industry players get their star turn, but ExxonMobil and the deceptively well-behaved Rex Tillerson emerge as two of the past century's most consequential corporate villains. The oil and gas industry has weakened democracies in developed and developing countries, fouled oceans and rivers, and propped up authoritarian thieves and killers.