Petrolia: The Landscape of America's First Oil Boom (review)

Abstract

I happened to read the first few chapters of Brian Black's Petrolia one unusually balmy February afternoon, sitting on a bench by the River Cam in the quaint village of Grantchester, a couple of miles upstream from Cambridge. The bucolic scenery--meandering river fringed with drooping willows flowing lazily through water meadows--has changed little over the past few centuries. This quintessential pastoral environment has attracted a bevy of famous writers over the past century--Grantchester's most famous resident and eulogist being the poet Rupert Brooke. In his best known poem, "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester" (1912), Brooke evoked the apparent timelessness of the place: