The Thief at the End of the World: Rubber, Power, and the Seeds of Empire

#672
Title: The Thief at the End of the World: Rubber, Power, and the Seeds of Empire
Author: Joe Jackson
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2008
420 pages


Absorbing and well-written, a better example of its genre (biography/history/natural history) than some, including Rose's For All the Tea in China: Espionage, Empire and the Secret Formula of the World's Favourite Drink, which treats a similar topic (biotheft on behalf of empire, destroying another power economically) but without the depth of Jackson's treatment. Here, the ethical issues are well-explored in both contemporaneous and contemporary contexts. This was a bit light on natural history, but adequate to the needs of the book's stronger elements. While Jackson occasionally strays into speculation about personalities and motives, much of the material is extensively and usefully end-noted.