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Embargo

How the 1973 Oil Crisis Changed the World

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Embargo

By: Philip Delves Broughton
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Brought to you by Penguin.

A riveting account of the 1973 oil crisis that upended the global economy and reshaped geopolitics for good.

In 1973, King Faisal repeatedly warned America that if it continued its support of Israel, he would cut the global supply of oil. On October 5th, he made good on his threat, and single-handedly sent the world economy into freefall.

Hundreds of people lined up at gas stations to collect their weekly rations, while the bright lights of Times Square had blinked out. Congress waved aside years of environmental opposition and scrambled to drill for oil off the coast of Alaska. European leaders sneaked behind one another's backs to obtain secret supplies, even gatecrashing the Shah’s annual ski trip in a desperate attempt to broker a deal.

Through an unimaginable cast of characters – from Gaddafi and playboy princes, to a paranoid Nixon consumed by Watergate and eccentric Texan oil barons – Embargo explores the six-month crisis that irrevocably shifted the West's relationship with its sources of energy, and the distant world that fuelled them.

At a moment when an oil crisis again threatens to upend the global order, Embargo proves both a gripping story and a fascinating analogue.

© Philip Delves Broughton 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

 20th Century International Modern Political Science Politics & Government
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Critic reviews

Jaw-dropping, deftly erudite, witty, shocking, outrageous. An extraordinary retelling of how energy changed – and continues to change – the deepest structures of world, war and nations.
Embargo is both an illuminating account of the 1973 oil crisis and an extraordinary echo of the current one. Philip Delves Broughton offers a sobering reminder of the misunderstandings that plague geopolitics to this day. Remarkably resonant.
A masterpiece: Delves Broughton is the most evocative non-fiction writer of our time. Here is the hawk-eyed King Faisal, seated at dinner with a hooded falcon, mimicking the bird's piercing screech as he throws it meat from his table. There is Ibn Saud, crossing the Great Bitter Lake in a tent pitched on the deck of an American destroyer, sheep penned at the stern. And in Washington, Henry Kissinger, soothing and schmoozing Liza Minnelli an hour before Faisal turns off the oil. Sand, gold and treachery — this book made me feel a century turn.
The 1973 Arab oil embargo was a profound turning point in the modern age – the beginning of a wholesale reordering of the world's geopolitical chessboard – and it has at last found its worthy chronicler. Through prodigious research and a novelist's eye for the intriguing detail, Broughton takes his reader into the conference rooms and desert tents where strategies were devised and deals cut to produce the greatest transfer of wealth in human history. Readers will gain a fascinating education into how the global oil industry really works - and have a rollicking good time in the process.
Gripping and insightful, Embargo is a must-read to understand not just the 1973 oil crisis, but every energy shock that has followed since – including the 2026 US-Iran war for the control of the Strait of Hormuz.
Embargo is the best book on oil politics I’ve read. It’s totally absorbing.
Philip Delves Broughton has turned the birth of the modern petro-state into a thriller - specific, cinematic, and completely impossible to put down. Embargo is the book that explains how the world we live in was actually made.
It takes a very clever author to deliver both a ripping yarn and a big ideas book. In this page turning history of the 1970s OPEC embargo, Philip Delves Broughton does both. Connecting the dots between the discovery of oil, the origins of Israel, Western corporate greed and the ongoing tension between tradition and modernity in the Arab world, he shows us why the Middle East remains the mother of all geostrategic chokepoints.
Marvellous. I gobbled this book up and learned something new on nearly every page. Even if we weren't once again wrestling with oil crises, I would have enthusiastically recommended Embargo. Since we are, this is essential reading.
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