The Prize : The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power
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Manufacturer: Free Press
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 338.272820904
EAN: 9780671799328
ISBN: 0671799320
Label: Free Press
Manufacturer: Free Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 928
Publication Date: 1993-01-01
Publisher: Free Press
Studio: Free Press
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Editorial Reviews:
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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.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: An Overwrought Encyclopedia
Comment: The first 200 pages of "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power" are compelling and fascinating because they are about the compelling and fascinating characters who created the modern oil industry. There is, of course, John D. Rockefeller whose organizational genius permitted the rise of Standard Oil, the antecedent of today's Exxon-Mobil. Then there is the hopelessly disorganized but very lucky British merchant Marcus Samuel who founded Shell, and the meticulous and disciplined Dutchman Henri Deterding who would turn it into Standard Oil's global competitor.
Oil's early pioneers sustain the early narrative but as we progress further into Daniel Yergin's 788-page tome the author's fundamental weaknesses as a writer are all too apparent. First there is his clunky writing style, so clunky in fact that the writing doesn't feel edited. Second Mr. Yergin chooses to talk about everything and about everyone, and so this book is more encyclopedia than narrative -- and it's very discomforting to read an encyclopedia structured as a chronological narrative. Third is how Mr. Yergin insists on the equal importance of his many characters -- in his estimate there is not a handful of founders of the modern oil industry but dozens. Fourth there is Mr. Yergin's insistence on the primacy of oil, leading him to make simplistic arguments such as that World War II was fundamentally battles over oil (it's very true that war is about resources and logistics but oil is only one resource).
A lot of these problems stem from the fact that Mr. Yergin really doesn't know that much about oil (Yes, I know it says on the back that he's an "authority on world affairs and the oil business"!). He ignores the environmental problems with oil, and doesn't at all mention the excellent and disturbing point that the documentary "Eleventh Hour" makes so explicit: that oil is captured sunshine, and by living off oil today we are essentially living off the past and mortgaging the future. "The Prize" has no original research, and feels like a hastily put together of newspaper clippings and books. The book's final 200 pages especially feel this way, and are just unreadable. What is the point of regurgitating the events leading up to the Suez Canal Crisis, the Iran-Iraq War, and other late twentieth-century crises that any reader who chooses to pick up a 788-page book on oil would already know about?
Mr. Yergin would have served his readers better to focus on the oil industry's early pioneers, and to trace how their corporate descendants have fared in the modern world. His tracing of the founding of OPEC to the Texas Railroad Commission's containment of the Texas oil glut in the 1920s is very interesting and informative. And if Mr. Yergin had more of these examples connecting the past to the present "The Prize" would be an informative narrative instead of the overwrought encyclopedia it is now.
Customer Rating:
Summary: the truth behind gas prices
Comment: Very informative. If legislators would have read this book back in 1992 we would be energy independent today. Oil is used as a weapon against America, the free World and it's citizens. Even the "Big 5" oil companies (Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP Arco, Chevron, Conoco Phillips)who operate in America and import oil from the Middle East are putting America and Americans at risk. As the author of, The Truth Behind Gas Prices, I say it is time to get energy independent. The Prize will not tell you how we can do this, but my book will.
Richard Clough
www.thetruthbehindgasprices.com
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Necessary Political and Economic Lubricant
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A must-read for everybody
Comment: 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!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Oil and the World
Comment: 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.
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