The Prize
It has taken me ten years to get around to reading Daniel Yergin's The Prize. I am sorry now that it took me so long, since it is easily one of the best histories of the twentieth century I have read. Among other gems, it offers:
- The story of how Standard Oil's kerosene empire was almost destroyed by Thomas Edison but saved by Henry Ford;
- How the son of a Jewish shell merchant in England became the head of one of the world's greatest business empires;
- How Winston Churchill defeated the German fleet in WW I by converting the British fleet from coal to oil;
- The decisive role of oil in WW II - from Rommel's tanks to Hitler's air force to the suicide voyage of the Japanese battleship Yamato;
- How the decline in American excess capacity led to a fundamental shift in the relations between the consuming and the producing countries; and much more.
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