This monograph (a preferable term here to ‘book’, I believe) was conceived after I had done a good deal of broadcasting, within the UK and internationally, on the Gulf Coast oil spill. Time is always limited in a broadcast, and facts and valid perspectives need to be got across succinctly to the exclusion of shallow comments which hardly leave a viewer or listener any better informed. I like to go to a broadcast having made a few jottings from news sources which as well as being possible material for the broadcast have attuned my mind to the topic shortly before I go on air