Discovery! The Search for Arabian Oil is a non-fiction book written by Pulitzer Prize winning American author Wallace Stegner.
Written by Stegner in the late 1950s the book was originally serialized in fourteen parts in the magazine Saudi Aramco World in 1970-71 and later published in Beirut Lebanon in 1971 in a limited press run. In 2005 Selwa Press asked Aramco for permission to license this work and present it as an illustrated, fully annotated edition that was released in hardcover in September 2007, the first time it was published in the US.
In late 2007 Selwa's right to publish the book under Stegner's name was questioned by the author's former agent, as well as by Stegner's son and by a biographer.
The book outlines the history of Aramco and the story of the first discoveries of oil in the Persian Gulf region and Saudi Arabia. Stegner wrote a detailed history of the first contacts between representatives from the American oil company Casoc (or Socal) and King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia and his concessions to the company to search for oil in the kingdom in the 1930s.
Read more about Discovery! The Search For Arabian Oil: Book Summary, History of The Book, Controversy
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