Overview

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Black gold. Liquid sunlight. Texas tea. Oil remains the ur-commodity of our global era, having been distilled from ancient algae and marine life to turn modernity’s wheels. Wars are fought over it. Some communities are displaced by its extraction, so that others may reap its benefits. But despite its heated history, few will ever see oil on the ground. Shrouded within a labyrinth of oil fields, pipelines, and manufacturies, it tends to be known only through its magical effects: the thrill of the road, the euphoria of flight, and the metamorphic allure of everything from vinyl records to celluloid film and synthetic clothing. Michael Tondre shows how hydrocarbon became today’s pre-eminent power. How did oil come to structure selfhood and social relations? And to what extent is oil not only a commercial product but a cultural one—something shaped by widely imagined dreams and desires? Amid a warming world unleashed by fossil fuels, oil appears as a rich resource for thinking about histories of globalization and technology no less than the energetic underpinnings of literature, film, and art. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

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9781501386626

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Reviews

More than any other substance, oil built the modern world; and more than any other substance it's now destroying that world. It's hard to imagine a more important subject, and this slim volume offers an introduction to the physics, politics, economics, and even the aesthetics of petroleum. * Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature (1989) * Written with sharpness and acuity, Michael Tondre’s Oil offers the single best introduction to the miracle substance to which we have unknowingly devoted our lives. Anyone reading this book will never again think about contemporary art, literature, and culture without also thinking about the resources they might offer us for imagining a post-petroleum world. * Imre Szeman, Director of the Institute for Environment, Conservation and Sustainability, University of Toronto Scarborough, Canada, and Co-founder, Petrocultures Research Group * Oil is the ur-object of modern life, and Tondre unpacks how it projects itself into the future by shaping our material surroundings as well as our dreams and desires. This book shows what oil enables and what it wants us to forget: that other futures are possible. * Jennifer Wenzel, author of The Disposition of Nature (2019) *

Author Information

Michael Tondre is Associate Professor of English at Stony Brook University, SUNY, USA. He is the author of The Physics of Possibility: Victorian Fiction, Science, and Gender (2018).

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