The evolution of the oil industry

Oil was once a curiosity, seeped from the ground and used for medicine and primitive lighting. Within a century, it would become the most powerful commodity on Earth. Manning wrote this account while the industry was still in its furious first act, capturing the wild early days with an immediacy no later historian could replicate. He traces the Pennsylvania strikes that launched an empire, the drillers and entrepreneurs who gambled fortunes on black gold, and the pipeline networks and standardization that turned a regional resource into a global enterprise. The book illuminates how energy itself became a tradable commodity, one that would reshape geopolitics, fuel world wars, and create wealth beyond anything the 19th century had imagined. This is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the origins of the industry that still dominates global power today, written by someone who watched it happen.