Includes bibliographical references and index.

Prologue : how Daddy nearly blew himself up -- A freak of geology -- Black gold -- The destiny of nations -- Automobiles and Middle Eastern oil -- Hopeless monsters -- Richest prize, greatest problem -- A day of reckoning -- Fossil fuels and the natural environment -- Toward a new energy order.

A history of the slick and foul-smelling substance that drives our existence and that becomes scarcer as our dependence on it grows.