Private Empire
by Steve Coll
- Percentage of approved critics who have given this book a positive review.
Critic Rating
43%
Critic Reviews: 23
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- User rating from iDreamBooks & iTunes
Reader Rating
73%
Reader Ratings: 158
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Synopsis
Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Steve Coll goes deep inside ExxonMobil Corp, the largest and most powerful private corporation in the United States In Private Empire, Steve Coll investigates the notoriously secretive ExxonMobil Corporation, revealing the true extent of its power. ExxonMobil's annual revenues are larger than the economic activity in the great majority of countries, equivalent to the GDP of Norway. In many of the countries where it conducts... more
About Steve Coll
- All Critics: 23
- Positive: 10
- Negative: 13
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Business Week | 18 May 2012
More often than not, Private Empire is a compelling and elucidatory work, though its disciplined, very ExxonMobil-esque adherence to rigor and propriety does make for some moments of reader fatigue. (Would a light sprinkling of personality-based gossip or insouciant asides have hurt?)
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The Guardian | 21 Jul 2012
Whatever one's perspective, Coll's work is a thoroughly researched and finely written portrayal of a business whose activities have profound implications for us all.
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The Washington Post | 11 May 2012
his reporter’s instincts to stick to the facts and let readers interpret their meaning is one weakness of this otherwise extraordinary book.
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The New York Times | 8 Jun 2012
Coll is a careful reporter but sometimes doesn’t know when to stop. “Private Empire” could easily afford to shed 150 of its nearly 700 pages. Do we really need to know where all the major Exxon Mobil figures grew up and went to college?
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Kirkus Reviews | 1 Apr 2012
Leaks, reserves, PACs, hydrofracking, bloated corporate profits and more: all pertinent concerns nicely handled by Coll in this engaging, hard-hitting work.
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Business Insider | 6 Jul 2012
Coll's book is extremely well written and enjoyable to read. It provides a balanced, deeply researched examination of one of the world's largest and most powerful corporations and is highly recommended for anyone interested in learning more about Exxon Mobil and the geopolitical dynamics of the global oil industry.
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Foreign Policy | 1 May 2012
But if Coll is seeking to build an indictment against ExxonMobil, as seems to be his aim, he does not achieve it.
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The Telegraph | 30 Jul 2012
on the whole the book offers an admirably balanced analysis which allows us to make up our own minds about this most secretive of American corporations.
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San Francisco Chronicle | 29 Apr 2012
Private Empire is not so much an indictment as a fascinating look into American business and politics. With each chapter as forceful as a New Yorker article, the book abounds in Dickensian characters.
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Boston.com
Steve Coll puts it in “Private Empire,’’ his powerful portrait of a powerful economic force,
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USA Today | 22 Jul 2012
Coll is able to admire the professional skills and zeal within the corporation while simultaneously sometimes criticizing the ruthlessness and lawlessness that sometimes become apparent.
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The New York Times | 26 Apr 2012
Mr. Coll’s dispassionate sentences are his book’s great strength and its subacoustic weakness. He covers an enormous amount of ground.
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Christian Science Monitor | 1 May 2012
In Private Empire – a book that, no doubt, will be described as exhaustive in reviews – Coll all but avoids dry holes in his wildcatting expedition to drill down into the story of a company that operates in many respects as its own nation.
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Open Letters Monthly
If Private Empire has a major flaw, it’s that this wider context is too often left unexplored. The book is constructed like a series of interrelated magazine articles.
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The Seattle Times | 4 May 2012
Coll's work will be a stunning description and dissection of a corporation's struggles to balance technical expertise with occasional forays into social engineering.
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The Globe and Mail | 18 May 2012
The author and his researchers are masterful at the encyclopedic, yet remind us that encyclopedias are inevitably summaries. Too often this is compilation without inner context, detail without meaningful depth.
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n plus 1 | 18 Jul 2012
Private Empire never rises to greatness due to some architectural flaws...This results in a book with no momentum and not much glue. This is a long book about an oil company with remarkably little (unspilled) oil in it.
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The Daily Beast | 6 May 2012
ExxonMobil’s business affects not only our consumption but our industries, geopolitical influence, health, environment, and human rights. Which makes Private Empire a brutally important book. Coll has forged the biography of “a corporate state within the American state,” as he so aptly calls it.
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On Earth. | 30 Apr 2012
Coll conducted hundreds of interviews to compile this exhaustive -- sometimes exhausting -- history of one of the world's most secretive companies.
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Book Forum
Coll employs language that’s plain, clear, and free of accusation. Though some of the details recounted across the sprawling narrative of Private Empire are outrageous, the reporting is deep and fair.
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Columbia Journalism Review | 6 Aug 2012
The book travels the globe but rarely takes a moment to put all the pieces together. Private Empire is an engrossing account of one corporation, but in many ways it misses the chance to put the company into context. The detailed descriptions of events could easily be trimmed and concluded with contextual analysts.
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The New York Times | 8 Jun 2012
“Private Empire” is not as original and absorbing as Coll’s excellent Pulitzer Prize-winning “Ghost Wars,”...
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The New York Times | 26 Apr 2012
Mountains of facts are mined, crushed and consumed as narrative fuel. If Mr. Coll were a corporation, you would want to impose a carbon tax on him.
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