The editors of the Journal of American History think this an important moment to focus on the overpowering presence of petroleum and its by-products in many different areas of American life. Our consulting editors, Brian C. Black, Karen R. Merrill, and Tyler Priest, join us in hoping that these essays and the Web project that accompanies this special issue will prove valuable for our readers. The online component provides links to all of the articles, five maps—“Supply,” “Downstream,” “Environmental/Industrial Disaster,” “Political/Cultural,” and “International”—that situate important resources and events geographically. Readers will also find a link to our podcast interview with the consulting editors, an expansive list of online resources, and a gallery of images.
Oil and the American Century
by David S. Painter
Oil for Living: Petroleum and American Conspicuous Consumption
by Brian C. Black
Oil in the City: The Fall and Rise of Oil Drilling in Los Angeles
by Sarah S. Elkind
An Incomplete Solution: Oil and Water in Louisiana
by Craig E. Colten
Bucking the Odds: Organized Labor in Gulf Coast Oil Refining
by Tyler Priest and Michael Botson
ObjeImaging the “Devil’s Excrement”: Big Oil in Petroleum Cinema, 1940–2007cts of Police History
by Robert Lifset and Brian C. Black
Exxon and the Control of Oil
by Joseph A. Pratt
Crisis and Continuity in U.S. Oil Politics, 1965–1980
by Paul Sabin
Building America’s First Offshore Oil Port: loop
by Jason Theriot
Texas Metropole: Oil, the American West, and U.S. Power in the Postwar Years
by Karen R. Merrill
America, Oil, and War in the Middle East
by Toby Craig Jones
“Fetched Up”: Unlearned Lessons from the Exxon Valdez
by Stephen Haycox
The Seventeen-Year Overnight Wonder: George Mitchell and Unlocking the Barnett Shale
by Diana Davids Hinton
The Dilemmas of Oil Empire
by Tyler Priest