Aramco and Its World: Comprehensive 1980 Industrial and Cultural History of the Arabian American Oil Company and Saudi Arabia

Aramco

First Edition

Arabian American Oil Company. Aramco and Its World: Arabia and the Middle East. Washington, D.C.: Arabian American Oil Company, 1980. Printed in the Netherlands. Profusely illustrated with full-color photographs, maps, diagrams, and calligraphic reproductions. Original dark green leatherette with gilt lettering and ruling, matching gilt-lettered slipcase. A lavishly produced corporate volume chronicling Aramco’s global image at the dawn of the 1980s, Aramco and Its World represents a full-color evolution of the mid-century Aramco Handbook series. As the preface explains, the work originated in the company’s postwar need to orient thousands of new American employees to “a strange land among a people whose language they did not understand and whose culture sometimes seemed almost incomprehensible.” This 1980 edition—revised, expanded, and retitled—retains its dual mission as both corporate history and cultural primer, designed for “employees, and… anyone with an interest in these things and a desire to learn something about some or all of them.”

Visually, the book is striking. A section on “Arabic Writing” reproduces multiple historical scripts, from angular Kufic inscriptions to the flowing Ottoman tughra, alongside zoomorphic calligraphy shaped into birds and elaborate monograms. The caption notes that “calligraphy has been called ‘the geometry of the spirit’—a discipline of aesthetic order and decoration but immensely useful as well.” Panoramic landscape photography captures the Kingdom’s physical extremes: the craggy escarpments of the Hijaz lit by angled sun, wind-swept dunes with rippling sand shadows, the Red Sea’s coral-fringed shallows, and the jagged monoliths of the Jebel Tuwaiq. A foldout-style topographic map charts “The Growth of the Modern Saudi State,” with color-coded overlays mapping Ibn Saud’s territorial gains between 1902 and 1932. Industrial content is equally prominent. Aerial photographs depict offshore jack-up rigs and sprawling desert drill sites, paired with close-ups of roughnecks in hardhats and drill bits in motion. A “Gas Operations” spread presents a schematic of Saudi Arabia’s gas infrastructure, with multicolored lines tracing ethane, propane, butane, and natural gasoline flows from separation plants to Yanbu, Ju’aymah, Ras Tanura, and Jubail. Additional chapters detail refining, shipping, and petrochemicals, positioning Aramco as both a technological leader and a steward of national development. The narrative omits the fact that by 1980, Saudi Arabia had acquired full ownership of Aramco—transforming the American consortium into a contractor—yet the tone remains consistent with earlier decades, framing the company’s role as a bridge between cultures and as a driver of modernization in the Arabian Peninsula. Fine condition, with minimal handling wear; slipcase equally well preserved.

Item #22551

Price: $240.00