Yet for whatever reason, Yergin elects only rarely to mine his daily sources. It should not have been a tall order given Yergin's privileged entry to oil inner sanctums penetrable by perhaps no other writer. But it does not reach the standard that Yergin established with "The Prize," with its unforgettable anecdotes, flesh-and-bone personality profiles and trenchant insights, all of it set against the canvas of a big thought. It is easy to read, a genuine feat given its size, and seems to cover every facet of energy. This is a book that puts Yergin's impressive breadth of experience and knowledge on display. So how does Yergin manage? Unfortunately, not very well. Following up a blockbuster in any field is daunting, a challenge made more difficult when navigating the tricky space separating the dispassionate historian and the successful consultant-investment adviser. Now arrives the sequel to "The Prize," covering the years since. He presides over both with the intellectual cachet of Henry Kissinger and the showmanship of Mick Jagger. One is challenged to think of another writer who in the succeeding years parlayed his Pulitzer into a more successful business: Yergin's white-shoe energy consulting practice today enjoys the patronage of the world's most powerful oilmen, sheikhs and energy ministers, and his annual Houston oil show is probably the industry's most important. To summarize what petroleum had made of humankind as a species, Yergin coined the catchy anthropological phrase "Hydrocarbon Man." In 1992, the work was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.īut Yergin did not stop there. Rather than an inexorable march of world-spanning war, towering technological advancement and collapsing empire, the centuries, in Yergin's persuasive telling, turned on an improbable pivot - the need for, shortage of and switch to oil. It was a top-to-bottom historical reappraisal of the late 19th and 20th centuries. Not the typical stuff of best-sellers, it became one anyway based on timeliness (coinciding with the first Gulf War), the originality of Yergin's thesis and his eloquence of expression.
In 1990, Daniel Yergin published "The Prize," a magisterial history of oil. By Daniel Yergin (The Penguin Press 804 pages $37.95)
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