Episode · Dwarkesh Podcast · 2024-09-18
Books mentioned on Daniel Yergin — Oil destroyed Hitler, fracking destroyed Putin
Unless you understand the history of oil, you cannot understand the rise of America, WW1, WW2, secular stagnation, the Middle East, Ukraine, how Xi and Putin think, and basically anything else that's happened since 1860.
Daniel Yergin discussed The Prize by Daniel Yergin, Ida Tarbell's Second Look at Standard Oil by Ida Minerva Tarbell, The New Map by Daniel Yergin, The Commanding Heights by Daniel Yergin and others, and The Quest by Daniel Yergin.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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The Prize
The Prize by Daniel Yergin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historical account exploring the central role that energy, particularly oil, has played in global power, geopolitics, and international conflict for over a century.
Discussed“My first book had actually been a narrative history of the origins of the Soviet-American Cold War. So I brought that perspective to it. As I was writing The Prize, I didn't intend to do all of that. But with the discoveries, one thing led to another.”
Where to get it
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Ida Tarbell's Second Look at Standard Oil
Discussed“A famous woman journalist, Ida Tarbell, wrote a book about the Standard Oil trust. She said it was a great company, but it always played with loaded dice.”
Where to get it
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The New Map
The New Map by Daniel Yergin is a comprehensive geopolitical and energy analysis that examines the shifting global landscape of oil, renewables, and great power competition.
Discussed“One is in The New Map and you and I have talked about it. It’s the meeting with Prime Minister Modi in India.”
Where to get it
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The Commanding Heights
Discussed“I discussed this in a book you probably don’t know I did called The Commanding Heights. I describe a scene in the book where he brought his senior advisors together to argue about whether you allow market forces to work or not.”
Where to get it
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The Quest
Discussed“That is one of the things that made The Prize, The New Map, and The Quest distinctive. The Quest, the middle book, was a question. Where the hell did the modern solar and wind industry come from anyway?”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (6) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
“His book, The Prize, won the Pulitzer Prize. It's about the entire history of oil. His most recent book is The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations.”
“His most recent book is The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Yergin.”
“I've found that there are a lot of books which are nominally about one subject, but the author just feels a need to say, "If you really want to understand my topic, you have to understand basically everything else in the world." I think of a couple of biographies especially. If you read Caro's biography of LBJ”
“I think of a couple of biographies especially. If you read Caro's biography of LBJ or Kotkin’s of Stalin, it is a history of the entire period in their country's history when this is happening.”
“Here we are, as you mentioned, in Nantucket, which was a key part of the energy transition because it was a source of lighting in the 19th century from whaling. It was like in the first chapter of Moby Dick.”
“I interviewed Richard Rhodes, the author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb. It’s a similar story there, obviously it took longer.”