Synopsis: Oil on the Brain is a smart, surprisingly funny account of the oil industry—the people, economies, and pipelines that bring us petroleum, brilliantly illuminating a world we encounter every day.
Americans buy ten thousand gallons of gasoline a second, without giving it much of a thought. Where does all this gas come from? Lisa Margonelli’s desire to learn took her on a one-hundred thousand mile journey from her local gas station to oil fields half a world away. In search of the truth behind the myths, she wriggled her way into some of the most off-limits places on earth: the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the New York Mercantile Exchange’s crude oil market, oil fields from Venezuela, to Texas, to Chad, and even an Iranian oil platform where the United States fought a forgotten one-day battle. 
In a story by turns surreal and alarming, Margonelli meets lonely workers on a Texas drilling rig, an oil analyst who almost gave birth on the NYMEX trading floor, Chadian villagers who are said to wander the oil fields in the guise of lions, a Nigerian warlord who changed the world price of oil with a single cell phone call, and Shanghai bureaucrats who dream of creating a new Detroit. 
Deftly piecing together the mammoth economy of oil, Margonelli finds a series of stark warning signs for American drivers.
                             
         
     
    
        
        
    
 
    LightSail includes up to 6,000 high interest, LexileⓇ aligned book titles with every student subscription. Other titles are available for individual purchase.
 
    
    
    
        
            
                
                    Watch the power of
 
Lightsail in action
                    
                        
                    
                    
                 
             
            
         
        
     
    
 
    
    
        
                            
SUPPORT GROWING READERS
                    
        
            
                            
                    
                    Immediately Engage Students
                    Simple intuitive design has classrooms reading within minutes.
                 
                            
                    
                    Exponentially Grow Reading Time
                    Students love the LightSail experience and naturally spend more time reading.
                 
                            
                    
                    Accelerate Literacy Development
                    Students reading 25 minutes a day on LightSail are seeing 2+ years of Lexile growth in a single year.
                 
                     
     
 
    
        LightSail Education is a comprehensive LexileⓇ and standards-aligned,
            literacy platform and digital
            e-book
            library. Including multimodal learning functionality and featuring books from leading publishers,
            LightSail
            holistically assesses and nurtures each student on their reading and writing-to-learn journey,
            throughout
            elementary, middle, and high school.
        
     
    *LightSail offers a 2,000 or a 6,000 title bundle with its student subscriptions. Other titles are available
        for individual purchase.