Germination ... to 1945. A seed is planted
John D. Rockefeller, the power of petroleum, and the spiral of expansion
Sharing the world market : the first attempts, at the cradle of Royal Dutch Shell
The automobile : American oil regenerates capitalism
The tank : American oil feeds the victorious fighting machines of the Great War
The roaring 1920s : consolidating the new empires
Birth of a petrol-nation : Iraq
The majors band together : a secretly planned industry weathers the Great Depression unscathed
The persistent alliance of big oil with Nazi Germany
The enablers of the Second World War
Spring : 1945-1970. After Yalta : the United States and Saudi Arabia seal their alliance
Washington gives absolute power to American petroleum
Big oil's planetary empire and the Rockefellers' hegemonic ambitions
Big oil asserts itself : a matrix of political power in Washington
Saudi Arabia and Gabon : nations spoiled by oil
Cartel against cartel : OPEC's painful emergence
The leapfrog effect : Algeria, Biafra, and Libya
The golden childhood of the oil-made man
Summer : 1970-1998. OPEC : scapegoat for a 1973 oil crisis made in the United States?
Oil money : after neocolonialism, a perilous symbiosis
The second oil crisis : a deadly vortex of power is unleashed around the Persian Gulf
The long Iran-Iraq War : a lose-lose game?
The oil countershock : the frenzy of the Reagan years, the collapse of the USSR, and the BCCI scandal
Dear Saddam : the Gulf War, the fate of the Iraqi people, and the long-term interests of Uncle Sam
Planetary harvest : the time of scandals
Grandeur and decadence : the explosion of opulence, misery, and the human footprint
Autumn : 1998-20??. Oil's future decline is announced : the Persian Gulf returns to the center of the chessboard
September 11, 2001 : a rogue Pearl Harbor
Shocks and ruptures : the occupation of Iraq and crisis of 2008
