This Week Those Books is chock-full of crucial context — from fiction and non-fiction — to the shouty, doomscroll news cycle.
Will Iran war trigger a bigger shock than 1973?
Understanding the transformative energy of that oil embargo. And Hilary Mantel in Saudi
Image by Gino Crescoli from Pixabay
The Big Story:
The war on Iran enters its third week, having created one of the largest oil shocks in history and higher prices for petrol, food, electricity and cooking gas. Is this a potentially transformative moment for the world, as in 1973?
Could the current situation spark a big shift for the global energy landscape, simultaneously to clean renewable sources and to coal?
- After all, rising petrol prices will be felt less keenly in China because one-third of all new cars sold there are electric.
- And Thailand is now running domestic coal plants at full capacity, while Taiwan ponders whether to restart a shuttered coal plant.
As our first book explains, 1973 was a milestone, with oil-producing countries actually pushing the decolonisation process:
“…the reason 1973 is remembered to this day…is that the shock questioned the growth model of industrialized countries, altered North-South relations, and made the management of the bipolar order far more complex and uncertain…”
This Week’s Books:
- empire The 1973 oil shock’s place in history.
- A novel about cultural misunderstandings between Islam and the West.
Click to read on about the books and the back story
Originally published at https://medium.com
