Download The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World – September 26, 2012

The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World – September 26, 2012

Author: Visit Amazon's Daniel Yergin Page | Language: English | ISBN: 0143121944 | Format: PDF

The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World – September 26, 2012 Description

Review

“Mr. Yergin is back with a sequel to The Prize. It is called The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World, and, if anything, it’s an even better book. It is searching, impartial and alarmingly up to date…The Quest will be necessary reading for C.E.O.’s, conservationists, lawmakers, generals, spies, tech geeks, thriller writers, ambitious terrorists and many others… The Quest is encyclopedic in its ambitions; it resists easy synopsis.”

(THE NEW YORK TIMES (Dwight Garner))

“A sprawling story richly textured with original material, quirky details and amusing anecdotes... The tale is generously sprinkled with facts debunking common misperceptions, and Mr. Yergin sagely analyzes how well the energy industry really works.”

(THE WALL STREET JOURNAL)

“It is a cause for celebration that Yergin has returned with his perspective on a very different landscape… [I]t is impossible to think of a better introduction to the essentials of energy in the 21st century. In Yergin’s lucid, easy prose, the 800 pages flow freely… The Quest is… the definitive guide to how we got here.”

(THE FINANCIAL TIMES)

“An important book… a valuable primer on the basic issues that define energy today. Yergin is careful in his analysis and never polemical… Despite that, The Quest makes it clear that energy policy is not on the right course anywhere in the world and that everyone—on the left and the right, in the developed and the developing world—need to rethink strongly held positions.”

(THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (Fareed Zakaria))

“Mr Yergin’s previous book, The Prize, a history of the global oil industry, had the advantage of an epic tale and wondrous timing… The Quest, as its more open-ended title suggests, is a broader and more ambitious endeavour… The Quest is a masterly piece of work and, as a comprehensive guide to the world’s great energy needs and dilemmas, it will be hard to beat.”

(THE ECONOMIST)

“The Quest is a book—a tour de force, really—that evaluates the alternatives to oil so broadly and deeply that the physical tome could double as a doorstop… It is best read slowly, perhaps one chapter per day maximum, if the goal is to actually absorb the rich detail and sometimes complicated workings described by Yergin.”

(USA TODAY)

About the Author

DANIEL B. YERGIN is one of the most influential voices on energy in the world and a highly respected authority on international politics and economics. Dr. Yergin received the Pulitzer Prize for The Prize, which became a number one bestseller. He received the United States Energy Award for “lifelong achievements in energy and the promotion of international understanding.” He is the chairman of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates. His other books include Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy; Russia 2010; and Shattered Peace.

[www.danielyergin.com]

Product Details
Table of Contents
Reviews

Paperback: 832 pages
Publisher: Penguin Books; Upd Rev Re edition (September 26, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0143121944
ISBN-13: 978-0143121947
Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.4 x 1.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Writing massive 700 page historical epics is never an easy task. It requires deep research, broad vision, and great intellectual fortitude. Daniel Yergin demonstrated all of these in his first book, the classic Pulitzer Prize winner, The Prize. Although The Quest is an informative book in its own right, I came away disappointed with some aspects of it. The publishers billed The Quest as the sequel to The Prize. In the first part of the book, Yergin does try to pick up with the grand historical narrative that he left off twenty years ago. This is probably the most successful part of the book. But after devoting roughly 200 pages to this effort, The Quest turns into a series of long vignettes covering topics that Yergin, despite his formidable expertise, never manages to quite tie together.

The five subsequent parts cover: energy security and the future of oil supply, the development and evolution of electric power, the study of climate change and its relationship to energy, the emergence of new energies and renewables, and transportation and the automobile. To say these parts of the book are informative would be an understatement. Yergin has a unique expertise on this topic that few other scholars can match. But in The Quest Yergin can't seem to muster the vision and artistry to unite his coverage of these issues into a more meaningful whole.

Politically, The Quest is a very cautious book. At times, Yergin verges on becoming a lackey for the big oil companies with which he has likely developed ties as the director of a respected energy consulting firm. He tends to be far more critical of those who have challenged big oil than he is of BP, Exxon and the other corporate goliaths that dominate the industry.

We all live fast paced and complex lives. If you are a reader then the key choice you must master is what to read. There is simply too much out there, and you cannot absorb it all. Every now and then a book comes along which is the equivalent of a precious diamond. It is so full of information, presented in such an interesting way that you can't bring yourself to put it down. You couple this characteristic with an author who is a major thinker and what you have when you put it all together is a 1 in a 100 type book. This is a book that changes everything we know about energy.

This is Daniel Yergin

Daniel Yergin is such an author, and this is such a book. It has now been two decades since the he turned the world upside down with his Pulitzer Prize winning "The Prize - The Epic Quest for Oil". To have read it is to understand the world. Its monumental impact affected our economy and Wall Street. In the last few years it became apparent that The Prize needed a badly needed update, not just a chapter added. Instead of completely revamping The Prize, Yergin did one better, he chose to write on the world of energy in general and then incorporate revisions from his previous writings which were necessary. This brings us to "The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World".

We live in world that currently creates $65 trillion per year in gross production of goods and services. Our country does close to $15 trillion of this production, while Europe as a whole does slightly more. Within 20 years the world is expected to produce $130 trillion, that's a doubling in just 2 decades. Now here's the problem as laid out in the book. Yergin clearly spells out that in the developed world today we use about 14 barrels of oil per person per year.

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