Believing calls for economic independence from oil to be an insupportable "overdramatization and sterile overreaction to oil's cyclical behavior," Maugery (Group Senior Vice President for Strategies and Development at Eni, the Italian oil company) seeks to counter the "trap of catastrophism" that he sees as infiltrating the public discussion as deeply as the George W. Bush administration. He sets out to debunk these fears by describing this cyclical behavior through the history of the oil industry and similarly recurrent fears about oil shortages, fears that would produce a damaging American interventionist policy in the Middle East, as he suggests. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)