Customer Reviews

David, Goliath and the Beach Cleaning Machine: How a Small California Town Fought an Oil Giant and Won (Capital Currents)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a compelling story and a page-turner of a book. My only problems with the book come down to two related issues and one editorial lapse.

After introducing the fact that Erin Brockovich and attorney Ed Masry ("fresh from their success in Hinckley, California, with a major Pacific Gas and Electric settlement") showed up in Avila Beach ("to add to the community's confusion")(p. 81). The author only five pages later begins a paragraph with the statement, "The Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) settlement was very important to Avila Beach..." At first one must assume that the settlement mentioned at page 86 is the Hinckley settlement. One must read on for three more paragraphs before one gets the hint that maybe the settlement referred to is not Hinckley but Diablo Canyon. Actually, this reader had to read pages 81-92 three times before he was able to make the connection.

Secondly, the author continually castigates the Brockovich/Masry role in Avila Beach. This reader is not disputing Barbara Wolcott's assertions, but he is wondering why, after all the exhausting research and extensive interviews copiously rendered in the Bibliography, she did not obtain Brockovich and Masry's point of view? If they refused to be interviewed, then say so.

Finally, at page 193 a poem by Stephen Vincent Benet appears with no attribution as to its publication source.

Despite the above critical remarks, this is a must read, especailly for those who doubt that Corporate America can do anything but good.

A thought-provoking book that's an easy read. I grew up near Avila Beach and we all just accepted oily feet and hands as part of the beach experience. This is a wonderful book that shows the powers of big corporations to delay, obfuscate and derail justice, using high-powered lawyers, and the legal system against the people. It makes you proud that the system worked. And it makes you wonder what the big oil companies are up to now, or the mining companies, or other big businesses.

I read this book in its entirety the day I received it in the mail. It is an incredible story, one that is told in a riveting narrative. I absolutely could not believe the lengths to which this oil company went to deny, delay, and stonewall the efforts of so many different people and organizations to hold them responsible for an underground oil spill they had undeniably caused. This book was an eye-opener. If you care about the environment, about energy, or about the law, read this book. I hope someone makes a movie out of this thing; it is such a great story.

Having had the privilege of proof-reading this book I came away
awestruck on how one man with a principle and fearless resolve
took on a task so humongous it staggers the imagination. The
shear complexity of tiptoeing through the morass of political
organizations and getting them to agree on one subject at the
same time without any ruffled ego's is amazing. Money, power, and
revenge all figure prominently in this titanic epic on how one
man started a snowball that took down a huge oil companie's oil
polution stance from "crumbs" to "total capitulation". Following
this scenario step by step through the court rulings and the
political shenanigans is quite a task for the reader and the
included diagrams help keep everything straight.
Just authoring this book had to be a nightmare of data collection and review.
My work invloved repair of electronic communications terminals
with hundreds of thousands of wires and potential problems and
the complexity of which is on par with what transpired in this
book. I was very impressed on how the story was assembled and
presented and I do not think there are many authors around who
could handle the complexities and present them as well as they were.