March 13th 6pm
American Writer’s Museum
180 N. Michigan 2nd floor
Pipe Dreams: The Plundering
of Iraq's Oil Wealth is a riveting
expose of the oil industry by Star-Ledger reporter Erin Banco. Banco traveled
to oil-rich Kurdistan - an autonomous zone that the regional government claims
holds some 45 billion barrels of crude - to uncover how widespread corruption,
tribal cronyism, kickbacks to political parties, and the war with ISIS have
contributed to the plundering of Iraq's oil wealth.
The region's economy and
political stability have been on the brink of collapse, and local people are
suffering. Based on court documents and on exclusive interviews with sources
who have investigated energy companies and their dealings with government
officials, Pipe Dreams is a cautionary tale
that reveals how the dream on an oil-financed, American-style democracy in
Iraqi Kurdistan now looks like a completely unrealistic fantasy.
Erin Banco is an
investigative reporter at the Star-Ledger and NJ.com. A former fellow at The
New York Times and the Middle East correspondent for International Business
Times, she has covered armed conflict and human rights violations in the Middle
East for years.
Erin appears in
conversation with Danny Postel, assistant director of the Middle East and
North African Studies program at Northwestern University. Danny Postel is the
author of Reading “Legitimation Crisis” in Tehran
(2006) and co-editor of three books: The People Reloaded: The
Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran’s Future (2011), The Syria Dilemma (2013), and Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of
the Middle East (2017).
Join us for an interesting
discussion followed by a book signing.
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