The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power is
Daniel YerginDaniel Howard Yergin is an American author, speaker, and economic researcher. Yergin is the co-founder and chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an energy research consultancy. It was acquired by IHS Inc...
's 800-page history of the global oil industry from the 1850s through 1990.
The Prize became a bestseller owing to its release date: it was published in October 1990, two months after the invasion of
KuwaitThe State of Kuwait is a sovereign Arab state situated in the north-east of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the south at Khafji, and Iraq to the north at Basra. It lies on the north-western shore of the Persian Gulf. The name Kuwait is derived from the...
ordered by
Saddam HusseinSaddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
and three months before the U.S.-led coalition began the
Gulf WarThe Persian Gulf War , commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a U.N.-authorized coalition force from 34 nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.The war is also known under other names, such as the First Gulf...
to oust
IraqIraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
i troops from that country. It eventually went on to win the Pulitzer Prize.
has been called the "definitive" history of the oil industry, even a "bible"; some critics, though, consider the book too sympathetic to the perspective of the oil industry, of which the author is, in a way, a part.
Popular success
In 1992
The Prize won the
Pulitzer Prize for General Non-FictionThe Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction has been awarded since 1962 for a distinguished book of non-fiction by an American author that is not eligible for consideration in another category.-1960s:...
.
and has been translated into fourteen languages. Now out of print in hardcover,
The Prize was published in a paperback edition (ISBN 0-671-79932-0) that was released at the end of 1992, and is currently in print.
The Prize is often cited as essential background reading for students of the history of
petroleumPetroleum or crude oil is a naturally occurring, flammable liquid consisting of a complex mixture of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights and other liquid organic compounds, that are found in geologic formations beneath the Earth's surface. Petroleum is recovered mostly through oil drilling...
. Prof. Joseph R. Rudolph Jr. said in
Library Journal, for example, that
The Prize, "written by one of the foremost U.S. authorities on
energyIn physics, energy is an indirectly observed quantity. It is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems...
, . . . is a major work in the field, replete with enough insight to satisfy the scholar and sufficient concern with the drama and colorful personalities in the history of oil to capture the interest of the general public. Though lengthy, the book never drags in developing its themes: the relationship of
oilAn oil is any substance that is liquid at ambient temperatures and does not mix with water but may mix with other oils and organic solvents. This general definition includes vegetable oils, volatile essential oils, petrochemical oils, and synthetic oils....
to the rise of modern
capitalismCapitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
; the intertwining relations between oil, politics, and international power; and the relationship between oil and society in what Yergin calls today's age of 'Hydrocarbon Man'."
Sources
Ten years in the making,
The Prize draws on extensive research carried out by the author and his staff, including Sue Lena Thompson, Robert Laubacher, and
Geoffrey LumsdenGeoffrey Lumsden was a British character actor who had a lengthy career on television.By some way his best known role was Captain Square in Dad's Army, the pompous commander of the Eastgate platoon of the Home Guard who was a rival of Captain Mainwaring.He appeared in a few episodes, though...
. Daniel Yergin has excellent connections with the oil industry, and is the Chairman of a private energy consulting firm called
Cambridge Energy Research AssociatesCambridge Energy Research Associates is a consulting company in the United States that specializes in advising governments and private companies on energy markets, geopolitics, industry trends, and strategy...
, Global Energy Analyst for NBC and CNBC, member of the board of the United States Energy Association and of the U.S.-Russian Business Council. Yergin's history has 61 pages of notes and a bibliography of 26 pages that lists as sources not only 700 books, articles, and dissertations, 60 government documents, 28 "data sources", more than 34 manuscript collections, fifteen government archives, eight oral histories, and four oil company archives (
AmocoAmoco Corporation, originally Standard Oil Company , was a global chemical and oil company, founded in 1889 around a refinery located in Whiting, Indiana, United States....
,
ChevronChevron Corporation is an American multinational energy corporation headquartered in San Ramon, California, United States and active in more than 180 countries. It is engaged in every aspect of the oil, gas, and geothermal energy industries, including exploration and production; refining,...
,
GulfGulf Oil was a major global oil company from the 1900s to the 1980s. The eighth-largest American manufacturing company in 1941 and the ninth-largest in 1979, Gulf Oil was one of the so-called Seven Sisters oil companies...
, and
Royal Dutch ShellRoyal Dutch Shell plc , commonly known as Shell, is a global oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the fifth-largest company in the world according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine and one of the six...
), but also 80 personal interviews with key individuals like James Schlesinger and
Armand HammerArmand Hammer was an American business tycoon most closely associated with Occidental Petroleum, a company he ran for decades, though he was known as well as for his art collection, his philanthropy, and for his close ties to the Soviet Union.Thanks to business interests around the world and his...
.
Adaptations
The Prize was the basis for a six hour documentary television series titled
The Prize - The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, & Power, narrated by
Donald SutherlandDonald McNichol Sutherland, OC is a Canadian actor with a film career spanning nearly 50 years. Some of Sutherland's more notable movie roles included offbeat warriors in such war movies as The Dirty Dozen, , MASH , and Kelly's Heroes , as well as in such popular films as Klute, Invasion of the...
. The series is said to have been seen by 20 million people in the United States.
The book is also available as an abridged audiobook, read by
Bob JamiesonRobert John Jamieson, known as Bob Jamieson, was a television news correspondent for ABC News until January 2008. After getting his start in local news in St. Louis and Chicago, he joined NBC's national news bureau in 1971. There he reported on a variety of national and international news,...
with a run time of 2 hours and 53 minutes.
In 2011 Yergin's
The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World was published by Penguin Press.
The Quest is considered the sequel to
The Prize.
External links