Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: The spectres of peak conventional oil and stagflation.- Chapter 3: Salvation and damnation: the rise of non-conventional oil and quantitative easing.- Chapter 4: Revisiting the 1970s.- Chapter 5: Conclusions.

This book explains the place of oil in the economic and political predicaments that now confront the West. Thompson explains the problems that the rising cost of oil posed in the years leading up to the 2008 crash, and the difficulties that a volatile oil market now poses to economic recovery under the conditions of high debt, low growth and quantitative easing. The author argues that the 'Gordian knot' created by the economic and political dynamics of supply and demand oil in the present international economy poses a fundamental challenge to the assumption of economic progress embedded in Western democratic expectations.