About this Item
Aramco and Its World: Arabia and the Middle East. Washington, D.C.: Arabian American Oil Company, 1980. First edition, blue cloth issue with folding map. Missing dust jacket.Large quarto. 275 pages. Profusely illustrated with full-color photographs, maps, and diagrams, many double-page and some folding. Bound in publisher's blue cloth with turquoise lettering. Includes large folding color map of The Arabian Peninsula (approx. 24 x 36 in.) inserted at rear. This first edition of Aramco's 1980 definitive corporate and cultural history, Aramco and Its World replaced the long-running Aramco Handbook series. As the Preface recounts, the work "had its origins in the late 1940s when Aramco.was moving through a period of tremendous growth and expansion," beginning as a set of spiral-bound booklets for incoming American employees and evolving into increasingly sophisticated volumes. This edition is described internally as the "fifth edition of a work first published some thirty years ago," the first in its current, lavishly illustrated form intended for both employees and general audiences. Its publication came just months after Saudi Arabia completed full acquisition of Aramco, marking a symbolic transition from an American-run concession to a wholly Saudi-owned energy giant. The volume's imagery offers a panoramic visual narrative of Saudi Arabia's geography, culture, and petroleum industry. Opening spreads such as "Saudi Arabia: The Heartland" feature dramatic desert landscapes-here a dusky sky frames the rock arch of Jebel al-Fil-signaling both the natural grandeur and the remoteness of the company's operating environment. Cultural sections like "Life in the Desert" depict Bedouin traditions with vivid immediacy: a coffee-making ritual by an open fire, a camel-mounted rider in mid-stride, and herders tending goats beside black goat-hair tents. The text observes that Bedouin tents "had to be easy to erect and dismantle, light and portable, easy to maintain and repair, and resistant to wind and rain," underscoring adaptations to a harsh environment. Cartographic and technical plates emphasize Aramco's industrial reach. A three-dimensional shaded relief map of "Oil Fields of the Middle East" marks Aramco's concessions in bright color, while a fold-out bird's-eye rendering of the Arabian Peninsula reveals both geological structure and strategic positioning. Industrial imagery ranges from surveyors taking seismic readings in the Rub' al-Khali to control rooms filled with instrumentation panels, juxtaposing desert isolation with cutting-edge technology. Port and refining infrastructure appear in striking aerial views-tank farms arrayed in geometric precision at Ras Tanura, offshore drilling platforms silhouetted against the sunset, and supertankers moored for loading. Pie charts dated 1978 quantify global oil production, reserves, and consumption, visually situating Saudi Arabia as the dominant petroleum power of the era. The rear pocket's folding map, "The Arabian Peninsula" (drawn by Don Thompson), presents the region in bold topographic color, an oversized corporate gift that reinforces the book's function as a prestige object. The personal inscription on the front free endpaper-"Dear Dick and Susie.I'm on page 117"-further individualizes this copy, hinting at the book's use as a personal and professional keepsake within Aramco's expatriate community. Light sunning and small marks to cloth; map fine.
Seller Inventory # 22552
Contact seller
Report this item
