For weeks, drivers in central Canada have been worrying about their next fill-up, lining up at the pumps to pay skyrocketing prices for fuel when they can find it. For the first time in years we have seen stations run dry and rationing in those with supplies. Although the shortage was temporary and caused by a freakish combination of events -- problems at two refineries coupled with a train workers' strike -- it nonetheless should serve as a long overdue wake-up call: We can't go on like this.

All this provides new pertinence to Oil on the Brain, Lisa Margonelli's timely examination of how the stuff we use to fuel our cars gets from producer to consumer, and the price we pay, in every sense of the word.

Her jumping-off point is the place where most people encounter gasoline -- the service station. Then she works backward through the refinery to the drill site and the offshore platform. There are visits to the New York Mercantile Exchange and producing countries Venezuela, Chad, Iran and Nigeria. A chapter on China looks to the future as millions of people vie for the right to own four wheels, not just two.

Like a novel that starts in the present and progresses backward and forward, it's a device that seems counterintuitive, but it works.

Ms. Margonelli, a former columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle, now a fellow at the New America Foundation, knows how to spin a tale and has an eye for the surprising detail. In addition, she can take reams of arcane information and transform it into informative prose that keep readers turning the pages...

For the complete review, please visit the National Post website.