Fuel Lines

There’s a lot of stuff we consume while barely pausing to consider where it comes from; it is easy, these days, to be insulated from production. Inquisitive writers profitably explore the knowledge gap: recent work about the life stories of handguns, French fries and Panama hats comes to mind. Tracy Kidder chronicled the creation of a computer in “The Soul of a New Machine,” and last year Michael Pollan traced the sources of our dinners in “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” This year comes something new about those obscure practicalities of how does it get here: “Oil on the Brain,” by Lisa Margonelli. Article continued here.