The sum was less than the parts.
A lot of great information about the culture of Exxon, it’s two most prominent CEO’s Raymond and Tillerson, and a lot of great tidbits about how the oil industry worked.
I actually finished the book with a higher (but still negative) opinion of Exxon than when I started. Exxon seems to be the company version of a crotchety old grandpa: he says what he thinks, does a few things that are not at all appropriate in today’s society, but wins every family game of scrabble and rubs it in afterwards.
Unfortunately, it seems to have been padded with a lot of information about the State Department and political environments of the countries Exxon operated in. I can understand the allure of including such content, cables tend to be well sourced and credible, but parts of the book just felt like reading cable traffic.
I also longed for a longer-term narrative that traced in detail the links from Standard Oil to Exxon, and a little more than the top lieutenants about how day to day life in the oil business actually works. It seems the only non-management characters to get any profiling were those involved in some of the largest accidents.