The Wall Street Journal reporter Gregory Zuckerman tells the story of the American shale revolution through the wildcatters and entrepreneurs who made it happen—men who defied conventional wisdom to extract oil and natural gas from dense shale rock that the major energy companies had written off as worthless. In the mid-2000s, American oil production was in steep decline, natural gas was scarce, and a new energy crisis seemed likely; Exxon, Chevron, and the other giants had largely given up on new discoveries on U.S. soil. Against this backdrop, Zuckerman follows a handful of risk-taking outsiders—among them George Mitchell, the son of a Greek goatherd who spent years perfecting hydraulic fracturing through shale; the charismatic Aubrey McClendon of Chesapeake Energy; the sharecropper's son Harold Hamm; Tom Ward; Charif Souki; and Mark Papa—as they experimented with fracking and horizontal drilling and, in just a few years, unleashed a revolution. Their success transformed the United States from a nation dependent on imported energy into a leading producer, reshaping the country's economy, geopolitics, and environment, and making and destroying enormous fortunes in the process. Zuckerman renders this as a dramatic, character-driven narrative of ambition, brinkmanship, and reversal, moving from the oil fields of North Dakota and Pennsylvania to tense Wall Street boardrooms. He also confronts the fierce controversy the boom provoked, weighing the environmental costs and the arguments of activists who charge that fracking threatens water supplies and the climate. The result is a vivid account of how a small group of stubborn drillers changed the economic and strategic course of the modern world.