Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author Steve Coll is the author of The Bin Ladens, a sprawling history of the bin Laden clan and a "psychologically detailed portrait of the brutal 9/11 mastermind" (New York Times), and Ghost Wars, a narrative of the CIA's involvement in the evolution of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. A staff writer for The New Yorker, Coll has served as managing editor and South Asia bureau chief of the Washington Post. In Private Empire, Coll probes the infamously secret world of ExxonMobil Corporation—from the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989 to the 2010 Gulf oil spill—and draws on previously classified sources to report the colossal extent of the company's global power.