Steve Coll's Private Empire" is winner of the FT/ Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award 2012. In this prize-winning book the author of " Ghost Wars" & " The Bin Ladens" investigates the notoriously mysterious Exxon Mobil Corporation & the secrets of the oil industry. In many of the nations where it operates Exxon Mobil has a greater sway than that of the US embassy its annual revenues are larger than the total economic activity in most countries & in Washington it spends more on lobbying than any other corporation. Yet despite its outsized influence it is to outsiders a black box. " Private Empire" begins with the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989 & closes with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Steve Coll's narrative spans the globe taking readers to Moscow impoverished African capitals Indonesia & elsewhere as Exxon Mobil carries out its activities against a backdrop of blackmail threats kidnapping civil wars & high-stakes struggles at the Kremlin. In the US Coll goes inside Exxon Mobil's ruthless Washington lobbying offices & its corporate headquarters in Irving Texas where top executives oversee a bizarre corporate culture of discipline & secrecy. " Private Empire" is the masterful result of Steve Coll's indefatigable reporting from the halls of Congress to the oil-laden swamps of the Niger Delta; previously classified U.S. documents; heretofore unexamined court records; & many other sources."