Product Description

Pulitzer Prize Winner -- and Now an Epic PBS Series

The Prize recounts the panoramic history of oil -- and the struggle for wealth power that has always surrounded oil. This struggle has shaken the world economy, dictated the outcome of wars, and transformed the destiny of men and nations. The Prize is as much a history of the twentieth century as of the oil industry itself. The canvas of this history is enormous -- from the drilling of the first well in Pennsylvania through two great world wars to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and Operation Desert Storm.

The cast extends from wildcatters and rogues to oil tycoons, and from Winston Churchill and Ibn Saud to George Bush and Saddam Hussein. The definitive work on the subject of oil and a major contribution to understanding our century, The Prize is a book of extraordinary breadth, riveting excitement -- and great importance.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2213 in Books
• Published on: 1993-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 928 pages

Amazon.com Review
Daniel Yergin's first prize-winning book, Shattered Peace, was a history of the Cold War. Afterwards the young academic star joined the energy project of the Harvard Business School and wrote the best-seller Energy Future. Following on from there, The Prize, winner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction, is a comprehensive history of one of the commodities that powers the world--oil. Founded in the 19th century, the oil industry began producing kerosene for lamps and progressed to gasoline. Huge personal fortunes arose from it, and whole nations sprung out of the power politics of the oil wells. Yergin's fascinating account sweeps from early robber barons like John D. Rockefeller, to the oil crisis of the 1970s, through to the Gulf War.

From Publishers Weekly
Energy consultant Yergin limns oil's central role in most of the wars and many international crises of the 20th century. "A timely, information-packed, authoritative history of the petroleum industry, tracing its ramifications, national and geopolitical, to the present day," said PW. Photos. Author tour.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This book does not require recent events in the Persian Gulf to make it an essential addition for most public libraries as well as all college libraries. Written by one of the foremost U.S. authorities on energy, it is a major work in the field, replete with enough insight to satisfy the scholar and sufficient concern with the drama and colorful personalities in the history of oil to capture the interest of the general public. Though lengthy, the book never drags in developing its themes: the relationship of oil to the rise of modern capitalism; the intertwining relations between oil, politics, and international power; and the relationship between oil and society in what Yergin calls today's age of "Hydrocarbon Man." Parts of the story have been told as authoritatively before, e.g., in Irvine Anderson's Aramco: The United States and Saudi Arabia ( LJ 7/81), but never in as comprehensive a fashion as here.
- Joseph R. Rudolph Jr., Towson State Univ., Md.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

A must-read for everybody
The Prize is a feast of a book. It is one of my all time favorites, including novels, biographies and the lot. Daniel Yergin, the author, makes a very exciting plot of the history of the oil business, starting in Pennsylvania in 1859.

The best parts, both analytical and epical, is where he writes about the upstream part of the oil business, ie. exploring, finding and producing crude. The story takes us from Pennsylvania, to Texas, Indonesia, Russia, Venezuela, Mexico, Persia, Kuwait and Saudi-Arabia to Alaska.

Yergins main thesis is that oil became a strategic commodity around 1900. Nations and governments want control over crude, because they are unable to conduct wars without it. Therefore they are willing to go to war to secure oil supplies, and availability of oil determined to a certain extent the outcome of WWII.

The book is also a very good account on general world history between 1859 and 1991. Interesting and fun anecdotes flourish, but Yergin is still keeping the analytical banner high. Fantastic book!

Oil and the World
Daniel Yergin's well-researched and sourced book provides the oil-based context for much of what happened, happens, and will happen in politics and war. A must read for those who want to understand the world in which they live.

Great book, still relevent even today
I learned a great deal from this book, from the rise of Standard Oil, it's dissolution, wildcatters, and the rise of the Middle East. I now have a better understanding of the economics of oil. The knowledge this book covers is still applicable today, including Saudi Arabia's continued role in attempting to regulate oil prices, and the risks/rewards of offshore oil drilling, and why too low price of oil is bad (too high is obvious, as we all know with the summer-2008 gasoline prices). It should be required reading for all politicians and also should be read by anyone who voices an opinion (left or right-wing) on energy-related topics.

Highly recommended.