Oil, God, and Gold

Here is the extraordinary tale of what the U.S. State Department once called "the most valuable commercial prize in the history of the planet," the vast oil reserves beneath the sands of the Arabian desert. Using Aramco files never before available to scholars or journalists, dozens of personal interviews, and U.S. and British government documents, Anthony Cave Brown recounts the unceasing diplomatic and corporate maneuvers aimed at obtaining this unimaginable wealth, an ongoing drama...
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Here is the extraordinary tale of what the U.S. State Department once called "the most valuable commercial prize in the history of the planet," the vast oil reserves beneath the sands of the Arabian desert. Using Aramco files never before available to scholars or journalists, dozens of personal interviews, and U.S. and British government documents, Anthony Cave Brown recounts the unceasing diplomatic and corporate maneuvers aimed at obtaining this unimaginable wealth, an ongoing drama that involved such figures as the great warrior-king Ibn Saud, founder of the Saudi dynasty; H. St. John Philby, the British scholar-adventurer who was a chief advisor to the king; the American philanthropist Charles Crane; Winston Churchill; Franklin Delano Roosevelt; and assorted oil-industry executives and engineers across the United States. Played out against a background of war and the turmoil of an ancient culture thrust abruptly into the twentieth century, the struggle to obtain the prize was won by the United States, which emerged from the battle to become the dominant Western power in the Middle East.