Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

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.

Average Customer Rating:

A Commuter's Nightmare

Customer Rating:

Kind librarians should consider filing The Prize in the "Reference" section as a clear warning to readers. Yergin's book is a laboriously impressive volume of forgettable details by one of the oil industry's most gifted analysts. It is not a light bedtime or commuter train friend! - The storyline lacks a cohesive theme - There are no main characters (including the oil companies!) tying the narrative together - Personalities appear and dissolve forever in rapid-fire succession, leaving little imprint on the storyline - The chronology often spirals confusingly in time, digressing into analyses which exhibit all the charm of a workplace memo Yergin has written an exhaustive business history using the wrong medium. I suggest chopping The Prize up into bite-sized pieces and posting it to a website. There, at least, the disjointed pages would bear no responsibility for drawing the reader forward.

Complete!	Customer Rating:
Everybody who works in the Oil Market should read this book! It's a complete story about the development of this Market!

Fantastic read..but..

Customer Rating:

Truly worth the pulitizer prize, a great read, a great view of history..but..don't buy the paperback. This book literally fell out of it's binding before I got through the first one hundred pages. By the time I got to the epilogue I had little more than a pile of loose pages. I don't own the hard cover, but I can tell you that the soft cover is a piece of junk. Too bad the binders didn't respect the greatness of the book.

The Prize: A terrific read on the history of Oil and how it effects us today.	Customer Rating:
One of the few books that I enthusiastically have recommended. Great historical information for history buffs. Great economic information and how it effects us even today. It will truely help you understand the dynamics of war, politics, oil.

You will not understand oil without this book

Customer Rating:

This book was written when energy, not terrorism, was the most pressing domestic problem. Oil is so essential to the survival of our economy. "The Prize" traces the history of oil from its humble, entrepreneurial beginnings in the hillsides of western Pennsylvania, to the shrewd domination of the industry by John D. Rockefeller, to the breakup of Standard Oil, and through the discovery of oil in the farthest flung corners of the globe.