please welcome steve coll. (cheers and applause) hey, mr. coll, thanks so much for coming on.ll right. i love the story of this book. it's called private empire as i said exxon mobile and american power. that's so exciting to me. because exxon mobile is an american company, right. >> they are. >> stephen: and they are projecting their power and therefore our power around the world. >> yes. >> they're good guys, right, exxon p if are you going to have your country taken over, exxon is the company you want to have do it, don't you? >> they're very good at what they do which is produce oil & gas and if you were the leader of an oil rich country and you want your money quickly and you want your project done on time they're probably the people to work with but they don't see themselves entirely as an american company. they see themselves as an independent sovereign with their own interest, not always the same as washington interests. they are own foreign policy, their own security policy. so their headquarters is in the united states but they're not entirely american. >> what are y

this week, steve coll's latest release, private

with us now pulitzer prize winning steve coll is the author of au"private empire: exxon mol and american power." welcome. >> thank you. >> why is this possible? >> production is increasing in the united states and cars are getting more efficient. partly by government demand and partly by innovation in detroit. >> what about natural gas? >> it's rising as a source of power generation in the united states because of our onshore supplies of natural gas are projected to be good enough for a century and affects the transportation industry less directly but might lead to changes the way we drive trucks and buses and large fleets. >> if all this happened, 25 years from now, we will not need oil from the middle east? >> we might not, but would we really be safe from turmoil in the middle east is a question worth considering. somebody still going to be buying that middle east oil and we're still going to the want free shipping around the world. >> the world is an interdependent? >> very connected and the oil industry is a global market. >> are you saying it's wise for the u.s. to continue some bi

steve coll is working on one, seth jones from the rand corporation is working on the other one. david mare misis working on another biography at this time, and there are a lot of great books that come out every year by serious journalists/historians that are worth reading. walter isaacson's book on steve jobs is a perfect example of that. it was an international best-selling phenomenon, and with good reason because of alll of the things we could learn from it. >> what are you currently reading? >> i'm read ago lot of things. i read eclectically, actually. i read a wonderful book called "blood knots," i loved that. i'm reading about the '48 campaign which if you think this is wild, that was really wild. harry truman and henry wallace and tom dewey, first election after the war. so i said about terry anderson and the book about george bush and how he decided to go to war. my wife just finished katherine the great which was given to me, and she picked it off, so identify got to go back and -- i've got to go back and get involved in that. i read a lot of magazine stuff, a lot of ess

>> pulitzer prize-winning journalist steve coll's latest book is private enterprise, exxonmobil and american power. he recently sat down with booktv to talk about the oil companies political and economic power and how it became the most profitable corporation in the world. >> host: hi steve. of thank so much for joining us on after words and congratulations on your achievement. i first of all, starting off i really enjoy the book. it read as a novel. it really read like nonfiction and places which i am sure as a writer you encounter some of that feeling as well and i know is a reporter you dealt with exxonmobil a good chunk of her career, how difficult it probably was to probe this company. lets let's kind of start there. wide exxonmobil? how did you come to the subject? i know that previously in your career so why this company and how did it differ from some of their other subjects like that bin laden's? >> guest: it's an interesting, to me it was an interesting journey because as you point out i started out as a business reporter on wall street when i was very young and then i went abroad