Brian Mackey’s Reviews > Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power > Status Update

'They had both been engineering students in the marching band — that is, double nerds.'

'Fundamentally, ExxonMobil's executives doubted the transformational power of ethanol; as with wind and solar, executives knew the technologies and chemistry well enough, from past work with them, to have earned their skepticism. Tillerson derisively referred to ethanol in public as "moonshine."'

I need to try this: 'The prince kept an unusual schedule. He slept in two four-hour shifts, one between 9 p.m. and 1 a.m. and a second between 8 a.m. and noon.'

'The tobacco industry's near bankruptcy had demonstrated that not even talented lawyers could overcome terrible facts in a product liability matter. Yet that example had also shown how industry funding and purposeful, subtle campaigning could profitably delay a legal reckoning for a dangerous product through the manipulation of public opinion, government policy, and scientific discourse.'