Oil and Ideology: The Cultural Creation of the American Petroleum Industry (Luther Hartwell Hodges Series on Business, Society, and the State): Roger M. Olien
Review
The Oliens have produced an innovative study that yields fascinating insight .
Enterprise & Society
The Oliens offer a fresh and valuable contribution to the historiography of the American petroleum industry.
Journal of Southern History
The Oliens know the history of oil.
Business History Review
[Readers] come away with a more thorough understanding of an important industry and an important time in American life.
Choice
They have written an important book for historians, policymakers, and the general, informed reader.
William R. Childs, Ohio State University
Traditional accounts of John D. Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Company, as well as recent best-selling books on the subject, still accept without question charges of unethical and anti-competitive behavior by the American oil industry. In this pathbreaking synthesis of cultural, business, gender, and intellectual history, Roger and Diana Davids Olien explore how this negative image of the petroleum industry was created—and how this image in turn helped shape policy toward the industry in ways that were sometimes at odds with both the goals of reformers and the public interest.
By turning a critical eye on sources that have often been accepted at face value and examining the self-interests of oil industry critics, the authors produce a more balanced, complex picture of the industry than has previously been offered. Their case study of the impact of ideology offers a striking example of how business must be understood through its cultural context and offers a new approach to understanding problems of regulation and reform.