Poisoned Wells: The Dirty Politics of African Oil. Nicholas Shaxson. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, 288 pp. $26.95.

"...Shaxson's journalistic account of the seamier side of African oil is less informative, although still a good read. Shaxson devotes little time to the actual players in the oil sector. Instead, he advances and documents the now-popular view that Africa's oil is mostly a curse on its economy and people, as the wealth it procures has unleashed greed and venality and produced growing inequality and environmental disaster. Each chapter of Shaxson's account tackles one dimension of this negative assessment with evocative vignettes and revealing individual portraits. His chapter on Nigeria demonstrates how oil wealth worsened the country's authoritarianism and corruption by focusing on the life and times of the Nigerian musician Fela Kuti. Another chapter examines how oil has enriched Equatorial Guinea's president for life, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo..."