Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century Helen Thompson (Oxford University Press, £20)
ALL WRITERS AND THEIR publishers aim for relevance, but the timing of this book is uncanny even so. Dis order, which aims to explain today’s instability through three intertwined stories about oil, money and power, was published on the day that Russia launched its new offensive in Ukraine.
The author, Helen Thompson, a professor of politics at Cambridge, is more widely known as a columnist and for her aphoristic, dispassionate contributions to podcast. She argues convincingly that world history since the end of the nineteenth century hinges on the pursuit, and price, of oil. The competition, wealth and dependency that oil and gas is about geopolitics — the idea that the location and resources of states drive history more than their peoples or politicians. It is not an easy read but it is bursting with ideas.
