Maddow uses an emblematic anecdote to tie together the multiple threads that run through this sprawling, often larger-than-life narrative about the global oil and gas industry. The anecdote begins with the opening of a Russian gas station. Lukoil, one of Russia’s most powerful oil companies, opened its first-ever location on American soil in Manhattan in 2003. The event was attended by Vladimir Putin.

Maddow establishes her central argument that the oil industry, though far-reaching and globally expansive, is primarily an American enterprise. More specifically, Maddow ties the genesis of the American oil industry to John D. Rockefeller, the symbolic godfather of American capitalism. As the creator of the oil giant Standard Oil, Rockefeller witnessed firsthand how the oil industry could create enormous amounts of wealth. At the height of its success, Standard Oil was the largest company on earth, dwarfing its competitors and consolidating American oil as the pioneers of the industry, “having shaped the industry’s prevailing culture: the tools of its trade, its financing, its administration, its ethic, and its reach” (4). However, Standard Oil established a dangerous precedent, as the company was so powerful that neither federal nor state governments could rein the company in.