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The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power. By Daniel Yergin New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991. xxxii + 877 pp. Maps, illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index, Cloth, $24.95; paper, $16.00.
Reviewed by Richard H. K. Vietor
No one, to my knowledge, has ever before tried to tell the whole, epic story of international oil. Daniel Yergin, who detects in petroleum the prize behind most diplomatic and economic events of any consequence, obviously wanted to. And through the device of the biographical sketch, with a personable writing style and awesome research, Yergin has come about as close to succeeding, in a readable format, as anyone is likely to.
The sweep of Yergin's history, from the earliest days of Pennsylvania rock oil to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait--and everything in between--is truly amazing. The book is organized into five parts, with thirty-six chapters. Part 1 documents the origins of the oil industry around the world and especially the rise of the founding companies--John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil (as well as the newer majors) in America, Marcus Samuel's Shell Transport in Britain, the Nobels and Rothschilds in the Russian Caucasus, Royal Dutch in Indonesia, and William D'Arcy's Anglo-Persian venture in Persia. Part 2 paints the struggle among these giants in the context of global upheavals--the First World War, the automotive and gasoline revolution, and the Great Depression.
Part 3 focuses on...