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

This is the one author who understands the industry and pulls no punches. I do not read 'history' but could not put this book down from the moment I read page one.
Fantastic!

A traves de casi 1000 páginas Yergin nos lleva no solo por la historia del petroleo sino a través de la historia de la ultima mitad del siglo XIX y todo el XX. Es un verdadero estudio enciclopédico, excelentemente bien redactado, ameno y bastante objetivo que resume como la historia política, incluso las guerras mundiales, son abrumadoramente influidas por el petroleo. Debe leerse.

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 rich in) to an oil economy (oil being scarce in the British empire until the North Sea discoveries at which time it was really to late to matter). When the US oil balance tipped from exporter to importer and as that balance swings even more out of whack, US readers have to be forced to ask themselves, how long can the US sustain as a world power while exporting so many dollars in exchange for oil and even worse, how ill prepared we could be for a scarcity of oil 25, 50, or 70 years from now. The oil producing nations all recognized 50 or more years ago that their oil revenue would only last so long, that there are only so many decades worth of oil to pump out of the ground at a given pace, and that it was in their interest to maximize the revenue from each barrel pumped. The US and other consumers need to make the corollary discovery: that there is only such much oil to be had and we need to maximize the use and benefit out of each barrel pumped.
Fanatically, even though it covers all this ground, all these disparate topics, Yergin's writing is still incredibly readable and the story well put together. It's hard to imagine a history book that is a "page turner" but this one really is.
In short, if you haven't read this, you should. Maybe if every member of the US House and Senate and all the President's advisors would read this, a few light bulbs would turn on (compact fluorescent energy saving bulbs of course) regarding our energy and foreign policies.

Extremely readable. I enjoyed very much reading it!
This book is dealing with the vital commodity of petroleum in a very complete way.At the same time it gives to the reader a history of the main economic and political events that characterized the turbulent 20th century.

Simply, this is a book one simply must read in order to get up to speed on the history of oil in world history. It affects the way we live, our prosperity, our technology, what we wear, what we eat, how we build our homes and work spaces, and even how and why we wage war. The book covers the history from the time that oil was sopped up from surface pits, to the discovery of "rock oil" and its uses to make kerosene and cheaper lighting through the 1991 first Gulf War.

It has always been a wild industry with big winners and big losers. Huge risks have paid big off handsomely and even more often have handed out ruin. Those building and running the industry have gone to the ends of the earth and down to its depths to acquire the crude that is made into so much of who we are today.

Yergin handles this big canvas well. He writes even handedly about the development of the industry and its geo-political implications. For example, the decision to move ships from coal to oil in World War I had huge implications and added much to British Naval Power. We all know how the issues of oil and the Middle-East and Israel are all mixed together in a dangerous balancing act that has been used by a few for their own ends rather than trying to find a path to peace.

This is an excellent book and one that I think essential to one's understanding of the world we inhabit. Please get a copy and enjoy all it has to offer. The book is about 775 pages with another couple of hundred pages of notes, index, and a three page chronology of major events in the history of oil from 1853 to 1991.