Reviews

"San Francisco Examiner"Impassioned and riveting...only in the great epics of Homer will readers regularly run into a comparable string of larger-than-life swashbucklers and statesmen, heroes and villains.

"The Boston Sunday Globe"Pure narrative history, spun out as a tremendously exciting epic covering nearly six generations.

"The Wall Street Journal"Splendid and epic...brilliantly told.

James Schlesingerformer U.S. Secretary of Defense and U.S. Secretary of EnergyA masterly narrative..."The Prize" portrays the interweaving of national and corporate interests, the conflicts and stratagems, the miscalculations, the follies, and the ironies.

This book does not require recent events in the Persian Gulf to make it an essential addition for most public libraries as well as all college libraries. Written by one of the foremost U.S. authorities on energy, it 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 oil to the rise of modern capitalism; 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.'' Parts of the story have been told as authoritatively before, e.g., in Irvine Anderson's Aramco: The United States and Saudi Arabia ( LJ 7/81), but never in as comprehensive a fashion as here.-- Joseph R. Rudolph Jr., Towson State Univ., Md.

"San Francisco Examiner"

Impassioned and riveting...only in the great epics of Homer will readers regularly run into a comparable string of larger-than-life swashbucklers and statesmen, heroes and villains.
"The Boston Sunday Globe"

Pure narrative history, spun out as a tremendously exciting epic covering nearly six generations.
"The Wall Street Journal"

Splendid and epic...brilliantly told.
James Schlesinger

former U.S. Secretary of Defense and U.S. Secretary of EnergyA masterly narrative..."The Prize" portrays the interweaving of national and corporate interests, the conflicts and stratagems, the miscalculations, the follies, and the ironies.