Intensive research into original source materials, sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute.

In Two Volumes. Volume 1, The Age Of Illumination, 1859-1899; Volume 2, The Age Of Energy, 1899-1959. Additional Contributors Include Ralph L. Andreano, Gilbert C. Klose And Paul A. Weinstein.

The petroleum industry is unique: it is an industry without which modern civilization would collapse. Despite the advances in alternative energy, petroleum’s role is still central. Petroleum still drives economics, geopolitics, and sometimes war. The history of petroleum is, to some measure, the history of the modern world. This book represents a concise but complete one-volume reference on the history of the petroleum industry from pre-modern times to the present day, covering all aspects of business, technology, and geopolitics. The book also presents an analysis of the future of petroleum, and a highly useful set of statistical graphs. Anyone interested in the history, status, and outlook for petroleum will find this book a uniquely valuable first place to look. This new second edition incorporates all the revolutionary changes in the petroleum landscape since the first edition was published, including the boom in extraction of oil and gas from shale formations using techniques such as fracking and horizontal drilling. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of the Petroleum Industry contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 500 cross-referenced entries on companies, people, events, technologies, countries, provinces, cities, and regions related to the history of the world’s petroleum industry. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the petroleum industry.

The role of large-scale business enterprise—big business and its managers—during the formative years of modern capitalism (1850s–1920s) is delineated in this pathmarking book. Alfred Chandler, Jr., sets forth the reasons for the dominance of big business in American transportation, communications, and central sectors of production and distribution.

The American economy has provided a level of well-being that has consistently ranked at or near the top of the international ladder. A key source of this success has been widespread participation in political and economic processes. In The Government and the American Economy, leading economic historians chronicle the significance of America’s open-access society and the roles played by government in its unrivaled success story. America’s democratic experiment, the authors show, allowed individuals and interest groups to shape the structure and policies of government, which, in turn, have fostered economic success and innovation by emphasizing private property rights, the rule of law, and protections of individual freedom. In response to new demands for infrastructure, America’s federal structure hastened development by promoting the primacy of states, cities, and national governments. More recently, the economic reach of American government expanded dramatically as the populace accepted stronger limits on its economic freedoms in exchange for the increased security provided by regulation, an expanded welfare state, and a stronger national defense.

Since the beginnings of the oil industry, production activity has been governed by the 'law of capture,' dictating that one owns the oil recovered from one's property even if it has migrated from under neighboring land. This 'finders keepers' principle has been excoriated by foreign critics as a 'law of the jungle' and identified by American commentators as the root cause of the enormous waste of oil and gas resulting from U.S. production methods in the first half of the 20th century. Yet while in almost every other country the law of capture is today of marginal significance, it continues in.