In BOOM, prize-winning reporter Tony Horwitz takes a spirited road
trip through the wild new frontier of energy in North America. His
journey begins in subarctic Alberta, where thousands of miners labor in
an industrial moonscape to extract the region's oil-rich tar sands.
Horwitz then follows the route of the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline that
may carry tar-sands oil from Canada across Montana, the Dakotas, and
Nebraska en route to Gulf Coast refineries.
Horwitz's 4,000 mile adventure brings him into contact with astonishing
characters on all sides of the energy boom. He meets "rig pigs" and
"cement heads" hoping to make a quick fortune laboring in the oilfields;
casino operators and strippers eager to relieve workers of their high
wages; farmers and Native Americans who fear the pipeline's impact on
land, water, and climate; and Keystone cowboys who tout the economic
benefits of the oil rush in progress on the Plains.
BOOM is both a gritty, boots-on-the ground odyssey and a profound
exploration of what's at stake - for the environment, the economy, and
foreign policy - as America becomes the largest energy producer in the
world.
About the Author
Tony Horwitz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who spent a decade
as a foreign correspondent, mainly covering wars and conflicts in the
Middle East, Africa, and Europe for the Wall Street Journal. His books
include the best sellers Confederates in the Attic, Blue Latitudes,
Baghdad Without a Map, and A Voyage Long and Strange. His latest
book, Midnight Rising, was named a New York Times Notable Book of
2011 and one of the year's ten best books by Library Journal and won
the 2012 William Henry Seward Award for excellence in Civil War
biography.
Horwitz has also written for The New Yorker and Smithsonian and has
been a fellow at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute. He lives with his wife,
Geraldine Brooks, and their sons, Nathaniel and Bizu, on Martha's
Vineyard.
