Rating: 
Summary: Really Four and a Half Stars
Review: Yergin does a great job in writing an informative AND easy to read book. There is little technical jargon to get in the way of the story he tells. "The Prize" is not onlyinformative,it is also entertaining, especially the cast of characters, ranging form Rockefeller to Bush the Elder (there is a great picture of G.W. Bush as a little boy standing next to his father at an unveiling of an oil facility). There are a few problems, however. First, although it is already over 800 pages long, the book deserves to be longer. More on the Soviet experience in oil, and a focus on pre-Saddam Iraq and other oil producers outside the Persian Gulf would have been welcome. Second, as other reviewers have mentioned,it would be great to see an updated edition come out. The world has changed a lot since the end of Gulf War ( I think the book ends before the collapse of the USSR, but I may be wrong) and I would be very intersted in reading what Yergin has to write about it. Third, while Yergin does discuss many aspects of the international oil scene,it seems to me that his account focuses on the Anglo-American experience a little too much. This stems partly from the pact that America and Britain were the power players in oil for so long, but it would still be nice to see how the oil drama played out elsewhere in the world. My final issue with this otherwise wonderful book is has to do with politics and economics. It is obvious that Yergin was trying to write a "fair and balanced" account of the history of oil. However, as someone who has been influenced by free-market economics,it is difficult for me not to point out the relationship between oil companies and governments. Whether it is Mexico nationalizing oil wells or New Dealers suing American oil companies for practices the New Dealers themselves encouraged, "The Prize" tells a story of various governments using every method, fair and foul (usually foul), to pump ,pun intended, oil comapnies out of as much money as possible. The most obivous examples are the nationalizations of oil companies' property in the Middle East,Iran, Mexico,and Venezuela. This is not meant to defend the oil companies as angels of all that is good: they too engage in political rent seeking when it promised more money or power. But, it becomes very easy to see towards the end of the book who really calls the shots in the oil industry. All in all,"The Prize" is entertaing and informative and makes a great summer read
Rating: 
Summary: Timely
Review: An extremely comprehensive and educational book covering a topic that everyone, worldwide, should be familiar with, especially given current events in the Middle East.I loved this book. Basically, this book covers the entire history of the oil industry! The story begins with the engineers who found the undistilled rock oils in places like Pennsylvania and ends in 1992 after the Gulf War had ended. It documents how the industry evolved during that time period, how events such as the introduction of the automobile changed it, and how eventually it came to figure largely in world politics. The many people whose lives were intimately intertwined in oil are all mentioned: the engineers, the oil company execs, the sheiks, the kings, the presidents and the prime ministers. Fascinating story. I want to see the movie (PBS documentary)!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book! But needs to be updated!!!
Review: This book is no doubt a great book, and the most comprehensive history of the oil industry. I hope the author updates the book every 25 years or so because once again this industry is going through another cycle. Also a lot of previously classified documents are becoming publicly available such as in 2004 the British released papers stating Nixon was willing to occupy OPEC oil fields with military force because of their embargo.
But the book does have faults mainly with Daniel Yergin put way to many of his opinions in this book (maybe that is inevitable). For example he says in the Epiloge that Iraqi soldiers commits certain crimes while in Kuwait, that information is know known to be completly wrong, so i hope the next printing of this book updates that. Also he says that Saddam Hussein had ambitions for Arab-conquest, maybe he is right but i feel his opinion is wrong...it would have been nice if he said that was his opinion, and another possible ansewer excists for him trieng to take over Iran and Kuwait.
Also this book does a great job of telling the story of Saudi, Iran, and Venezuala. But much is desired with Iraq, Libya, the North Sea, and Nigeria.
Maybe i am demanding too much from this book, it is already a 800+ page book.
I found the best way to complete it is: read one chapter a day, so you will finish it in about a month....it takes disipline but it worked for me.
This is a must read, everyone in high school or college should be required to read this book.
|
