Named Book of the Year on BBC Newsnight Review.

On April 20, 2010, BP's Deepwater Horizon exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven men and spilling barrels of crude oil into the water.

Days later, a confidential cable from a terrified insider arrived on investigative reporter Greg Palast's desk. He had the real, hushed-up facts of the disaster facts that can only be found buried in the files of a Central Asian dictatorship.

Vultures' Picnic charts the course of Palast's quest to bring the truth of the BP disaster to light as he and his team of journalist-detectives go from the streets of Baku, where Palast searches for a brown valise full of millions, to a small Eskimo village, where he hears firsthand of the depth of deceit and heartbreaking environmental devastation, to a burnt-out nuclear reactor in Japan, to Chevron's operations in the Amazon jungle.

Along the way, Palast and his team see the many other crimes perpetrated by the energy giants of the worlds, the banks that fund their lies, and the governments that turn a blind eye.

Like a page-turning spy thriller, full of mystery and intrigue, and featuring a reporter with the guts to get arrested, chase down insiders, and stakeout a Vulture in the still of a winter morning, Vultures' Picnic is pulp nonfiction at its best.

It's a journey into the corrupt heart of Big Oil, and behind it, Bigger Finance, exposing once and for all the corporate vultures who feed on the weak and poison our planet.