Steve Coll on ExxonMobil

Apple has challenged Exxon Mobil as the biggest American company, but Exxon Mobil deals with fuel for the energy that powers the world's economy — including Apple computers. Now it's become a sort of state on its own, with a foreign policy that may not conform to the foreign policy of its home country. Exxon Mobil is not "a US company," according to its former president, Lee Raymond. "I don't make decisions based on what's good for the US." He's cited in the new book,

Private Empire: Exxon Mobil and American Power

, authored by Pulitzer Prize-winner

Steve Coll, staff writer for the New Yorker magazine.