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Pulitzer Prize-winner Steve Coll tells the shocking story of one of the most powerful private corporations in the world In Private Empire, Steve Coll investigates the notoriously secretive ExxonMobil Corporation, revealing the true extent of its power. In many of the countries where it operates, ExxonMobil has a greater sway than that of the US embassy. Yet despite its outsized influence, it is to outsiders a black box. Private Empire begins with the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989 and closes with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The narrative spans the globe as ExxonMobil carries out its activities against a backdrop of blackmail threats, kidnapping and civil wars. In the US, Coll goes inside ExxonMobil's ruthless Washington lobbying offices and its corporate headquarters. Coll draws on more than 400 interviews; field reporting from the halls of Congress to the oil-laden swamps of the Niger Delta; previously classified documents; court records; and many other sources. Private Empire is a chilling, definitive portrait of ExxonMobil. About the Author Steve Coll is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Bin Ladens. He is president of the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan public policy institute headquartered in Washington, D.C., and a staff writer for The New Yorker. He won a Pulitzer prize for explanatory journalism while working at the Washingon Post. He is the author of six other books, including the bestseller Ghost Wars, which won him a second Pulitzer prize. He lives in Washington and New York.