Since age 18 Paul Carter has worked on oil rigs in locations as far flung as the Middle East Columbia the North Sea Borneo Tunisia Sumatra Vietnam Nigeria Russia and many others — and he’s survived (so far!) to tell stories from the edge of civilization (places as it happens upon which most of our lives rely). Carter has been shot at hijacked and held hostage almost died of dysentery in Asia and toothache in Russia watched a Texan lose his mind in the jungles of Asia lost a lot of money backing a scorpion against a mouse in a fight to the death and served cocktails by an orangutan on an ocean freighter. Taking postings in some of the world’s wildest and most remote regions — not to mention some of the roughest rigs on the planet — Carter has worked and gotten into trouble with some of the maddest baddest and strangest people you could ever hope not to meet.