The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters
Fans of the lively, character-driven nonfiction of writers like Kurt Eichenwald and Ben Mezrich should welcome this book with open arms. It’s a potentially dry story: a bunch of guys try to make a lot of money by hammering subterranean rock formations (shale, mostly) with liquid, breaking them up, allowing the trapped-in natural gas to come to the surface. This is hydraulic fracturing, otherwise known as fracking, and, in Zuckerman’s hands, the topic generates a surprisingly entertaining story about Big Men with Big Ideas, the highly competitive (and, in some cases, increasingly desperate) search for a new and potentially highly profitable source of energy. Zuckerman also explores the often passionate and outspoken opposition to the drilling procedure (for some, fracking doesn’t just sound like a dirty word; it is one), although he doesn’t come down on one side or the other. He shows us the beneficial side of fracking and the potentially environmentally disastrous side, and lets us find our own ground to stand on. A lively, exciting, and definitely thought-provoking book. --David Pitt