Raw Deals
Mathhew Fleischer-Black
Village Voice
An excerpt:
The aluminum pan you cooked your egg in this morning began as a bauxite deposit in a mountain in Jamaica. The cinnamon on your toast was once the bark of a tree in Sri Lanka—not a cinnamon tree, either. The cut flowers on your table? From Colombia.
Start questioning where everyday things come from, James Ridgeway tells us in It's All for Sale, and often you will get a surprisingly simple answer. Behind the scenes of it all, he says, a small group of private companies governs trade of the world's materials. Five companies control the flow of petroleum. Four corporations reign over the grain trade. Three each dominate timber, uranium, and tea. Two lead the way on fresh water and coffee, while one each runs diamonds and cigarettes.
Ridgeway, the veteran Washington correspondent for the Voice, traces the journey made by many of the natural materials we depend on. The book is organized by resource. For each item, he sums up how its market developed, where in the world it comes from, and who controls the business now.
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