A behind-the-scenes look at the world’s biggest and most tangled legal case. On their way to winning a $19 billion verdict against Chevron in Ecuador, lawyers for the Amazonian plaintiffs invited a documentary film crew to record their every move. Unfortunately, their every move included fraud. Chevron subpoenas the outtakes, and follows the clues from one improbable fraud to another. The drama culminates in a racketeering counter-trial, where it’s the testimony of one corrupt ex-judge against another. A detective story and courtroom drama, with an epilogue of keen commentary, Crude Awakening is the definitive account of Chevron’s struggle to prove that the truth is the truth_x2014_even when the truth is on the side of the big bad oil company, and not on the side of the charismatic little guy fighting for the indigenous people of the Amazon rain forest. Crude Awakening will captivate both students of law and students of human nature.
