Daniel Yergin
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 143
Average rating: 4.5 of 5
The Necessary Political and Economic Lubricant 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.
The recent and tumultuous situation with petroleum pricing, coupled with the obviously baleful effects on the environment of hydrocarbon fuels, combined with rising demands, diminishing supplies, economic turmoil in the world economy and sourcing from the ever-unstable Middle East prompted me to re-read Daniel Yergin's masterpiece, "The Prize".
While everyone has an opinion on petroleum pricing and usage, ranging from simple-minded conspiracy theories to empirical invocations of "market economies", no one outside "the business" can legitimately lay claim to having an informed opinion on the topic without having carefully read this book.
As is often the case in history, there is an annoyingly repetitious flavor to the story. Fluctuations in petroleum supply/demand ratios, wildly variable pricing, toxic waste accumulation, political machinations, corporate manipulation, Cassandra-like warnings of the dire implications of reliance on hydrocarbon-based energy, attempts to formulate national and international strategies...its all been stated, argued and ignored since the 1930s. As US Interior Secretary Harold Ickes caustically remarked during the War, "It is impossible to carry the American people along with you on a program of caution to forestall a threatening position." Yergin noted that, "Prevention, whether it be an ounce or a pound was bad politics..." Of course, the same holds true now, as then.
The insights into the "culture" of the oil magnates as well as those of the governments who sometimes worked with them (whilst simultaneously indicting them for "collusion", as did the US Justice Department); the motives of the Middle Eastern oil producers; the founding of OPEC (largely instigated by a Venezualan with Spartan tastes combined with ecological sympathies) and the re-appearance of the same confusion and mixed motives by virtually the same cast of players who currently occupy the stage are all brilliantly detailed in this book.
As for the writing, Yergin writes in an engaging and interesting style. Of course, there are some tedious sections in this very long book, but it certainly holds the interest of the motivated, non-technical reader.
In summary, this book, while written almost twenty years ago, remains important and timely at the close of the second decade of the 21st century. It is necessary background for understanding the current state of the world economy.
Editorial Review:
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.
