Customer Reviews

Oil Empire: Visions of Prosperity in Austrian Galicia (Harvard Historical Studies)

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This book is a rare historical work which combines readability and depth of insight. While I have read others that also achieve this mark, OIL EMPIRE is one of the few that does so and still maintains the specificity of an academic work. At times I found the author violated Orwell's dictum to use the simplest vocabulary to convey an idea, but this did not distract from the pleasure of reading this book. I tend to focus more on classical histories, and new nothing about the history of Galicia before I started, but I found the the author was able to situate her research so that this was not a problem. When I finished the book I was reminded of the old saying that to understand a large problem we must first understand a small problem. After the events of 9/11 it is no longer just the leftists who assert that control of the oil economy is at the heart of our foreign policy. This book provides a case study of how the same ambitions that we have today were played out on a smaller scale at the turn of the last century. I look forward to seeing what the author has in store for her next work.