Steve LeVine

I am Washington Correspondent for Quartz, the mobile-first financial website, where my interests are the geopolitics of energy and technology. That takes me generally to the frontiers where energy sets the stage and changes how people and nations behave, including in Russia, the Middle East and Africa. I am also an adjunct professor of energy security at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and a Future Tense Fellow at the New America foundation. For 18 years, I was a foreign correspondent -- in the former Soviet Union, in Pakistan and in Manila. In various years, I wrote for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the Financial Times and Newsweek. These were fantastic years to be abroad, stretching from the People Power revolution in the Philippines, through the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and Benazir Bhutto's first election to power in Pakistan, and on to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the growing pains of these 12 new countries. The Oil and the Glory is the product of 12 years of observing the world's great geopolitical players -- the U.S., Europe, Russia and China, plus a slew of autocrats, wildcatters and gamblers -- battle for oil, fortune and influence along both sides of the Caspian Sea. In Putin's Labyrinth, I followed a trail of life and death for a profile of Russia, which I tell through the intersecting profiles of six individuals. For The Powerhouse, my latest book, I embedded for two years at Argonne National Laboratory, observing a tight team of battery geniuses attempting to make a big technological leap that, if they were successful, could change the world. I am married to Nurilda Nurlybayeva and we have two girls.