The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power

by Daniel Yergin

Book Overview

Hailed by "The New York Times" as "a book that must be read to understand the first thing about the role of oil in modern history," Yergin's bestselling Pulitzer Prize-winner was made into an exciting eight-part miniseries that aired on PBS. 32 pages of photos.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671502484
• ISBN13: 9780671502485
• Release Date: January 1991
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 912 Pages
• Weight: 2.98 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.0" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

I feel understanding this book is the true definition of woke.

This book breaks down and explains. How the oil industry has corrupted our government. Also explains how it has bamboozled humans especially in America. I’ve how we need this product as it strips all natural nutrients out of the soil. I am Burns land rendering it useless upon excreting it from the ground. It is volatile it is not necessary to use to sustain human life.

I'd give this 10 stars if I could; it's the essential history of the 20th century

The Prize is one of the best books I've ever read. I wish I could give it a couple of bonus stars in my rating here. You'd really be selling this book short to think of it just as a history of oil, the oil business, and oil politics in the middle east. Even that would have been an ambitious book but Yergin makes it so much more. It honestly is a thorough history of the entire 20th century (sans the 90s) viewed through the perspective of the oil industry. As each chapter, era, decade, and war unfolds in Yergin's story, you'll gain a much better understanding of the roots of many of the US public's stances on big business, anti-trust legislation, and other pivotal issues of the last 100 years. You'll see how pivotal energy resources were in shaping the planning and rationale for 2 world wars and how the ready availability or lack of oil played as much of a role in winning and losing those wars as did battlefield strategies and the valor of the millions of soldiers involved. You'll see the role oil and energy played in the final collapse of the great imperial powers. Probably most relevant to 2007, the lessons Yergin teaches about middle east history, the changing power roles the evolved in the last 50-60 years as the power shifted from the oil companies to the oil producing countries. Tracing the roots of nationalization of oil production in Mexico and Venezuela is a great stepping stone to understanding out current relationship with Venezuela but it also properly frames the story of the origins of OPEC and OPEC policies. And it's so important to get a understanding of the power plays, who's who, back room deals, and longstanding rivalries that built and reinforced the animosity that so many in the middle east felt and feel toward the US and other western and oil consuming countries. It also traces the missteps and failed attempts at alternative energy sources as far back as the turn of the 19th century, including how alternative sources for aviation fuel provided the German Luftwaffe almost enough fuel to keep going in WWII. And it's easy to see how most other western nations have failed miserably to make the alternative fuel investments that might have paid those same kind of dividends. The history of how many relations between nations were built on the personal charisma and power of individual leaders is also a powerful lesson for the future when you look at what happens to those relationships when the leader falls or is removed from power. Yergin's tracing of the entire story of the rise and exile of the Shah of Iran is must reading as western leaders might all be thinking while middle eastern leaders and families might be in danger of falling to that same fate and what effect that would have on our immediate oil supplies. Any western reader and especially readers in the US should look at Yergin's perspective on the fall of the British empire as partially a failure to efficiently transition from a coal economy (coal being a resource England was

Definitive -- Yet Accessible -- History of the Oil Industry

The Prize follows the major developments in the oil industry, from its inception with the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company through the Gulf War. The Prize well deserves the praise it has received. Yergin's research and knowledge of the history of the oil industry are obvious and make this a great historical work, yet the length and the abundance of detail do not impinge on the readability of the book.Among many insightful sections of this book, I found the chapters on the role of oil in the Second World War to be particularly interesting. After reading other books about the battles of that war, it was useful to learn something about the logistics behind those battles.It is unfortunate that this book is already a decade old. In his epilogue, Yergin touches on the Gulf War and the effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world's largest oil producer in the late 1980's, but this was not quite history yet when he was writing The Prize.

Truly a classic text. Fascinating and enlightening.

Yergin's grasp of the broad view of the history of oil and its context in world history is amazing. Scholarly and yet as compelling as the best fiction, this book is a masterful work

Truly enlightening!

This piece of non-fiction is more exciting than FICTION novels