Antonia Juhasz, a leading activist and expert on corporations and globalization, investigates the true state of the U.S. oil industry, uncovering its virtually unparalleled influence over our elected officials, its lack of regulatory oversight, and the highest profit rates in corporate history. She offers an immediate call to action - a formula for reining in the industry, cutting down its governmental powers, environmental destruction, and movement toward war while reducing global dependence on oil - and proposes a bold yet viable answer: break up the nation's leading oil companies. Drawing on her own detailed historical research, Juhasz explores the parallels between today's companies and Standard Oil, the most powerful corporation of the early 20th century, whose stranglehold on the economy and government was broken only by the vision and persistence of activists and like-minded politicians.