What happened the last time a war in the Middle East sparked a global energy crisis? This is the gripping inside story of the 1973 oil embargo - and how it forged the modern world.

'Jaw-dropping, deftly erudite, witty, shocking, outrageous.' RORY STEWART, author of Politics on the Edge
'A masterpiece: Delves Broughton is the most evocative non-fiction writer of our time.' SEBASTIAN MALLABY, author of The Man Who Knew
'The best book on oil politics I've read' JAMES BARR, author of A Line in the Sand
'Philip Delves Broughton has turned the birth of the modern petro-state into a thriller.' BRADLEY HOPE, co-author of Blood & Oil

The king of Saudi Arabia had warned the Americans repeatedly: if you do not treat us with respect, we will cut off your oil. For years, nobody believed him. In October 1973, he made good on his threat.

The consequences were immediate. As energy shortages and blackouts spread through Western capitals, the world's most powerful economies discovered that their prosperity rested on decisions being made in Riyadh.

Embargo is the gripping inside story of the 1973 oil crisis and the small group of leaders who shaped it. It is the story of Faisal, the Saudi King who was born a nomad and became the richest man in the world. Of Ahmed Zaki Yamani, his unflappable Harvard-educated oil minister who drove American oil executives to tears with his steely calm. And of Henry Kissinger, the US statesman who failed to grasp how much leverage the Middle East had acquired over the West until it was too late.

Filled with frantic diplomacy and secret negotiations, Embargo follows the race to avert economic catastrophe and restore the flow of oil. In the process, it uncovers a turning point in modern history: the moment the industrialised world discovered how vulnerable its prosperity was to turmoil in the Middle East.

More than fifty years later, we are still wrangling with the consequences.

'Both an illuminating account of the 1973 oil crisis and an extraordinary echo of the current one.' LYSE DOUCET, author of The Finest Hotel in Kabul
'A must-read to understand not just the 1973 oil crisis, but every energy shock that has followed since' JAVIER BLAS, co-author of The World for Sale
'A fascinating education into how the global oil industry really works - and a rollicking good time.' SCOTT ANDERSON, author of King of Kings
'Marvellous. I gobbled this book up and learned something new on nearly every page.' ED CONWAY, author of Trade World