Books by Daniel Yergin

“Sections of the book focus on oil and gas, highlighting the recent changes within those sectors and the intriguing dynamics of those changes. The book also explores the intricate relationship between the energy sector and geopolitics. It’s a seamlessly written narrative, integrating the energy transition within the broader tale of energy developments over the past decade. The book’s title hints at its central theme: the evolving landscape of energy. We’re witnessing a reconfiguration of the energy map, characterized by emerging players and significant shifts. Yergin crafts a narrative of this energy transition, particularly aimed at those with a keen interest in the oil and gas sectors. He underscores the reality of these transformations, emphasizing their impact on international dynamics and the titans of the oil and gas world. The book doesn’t settle on a single overarching conclusion. Instead, it’s segmented into several chapters, each of which is easy to navigate and offers its own intriguing insights. This structure ensures a reader-friendly experience, making the content both accessible and engaging.” Read more...

The best books on Batteries

Lukasz Bednarski,

“The new edition is…a wonderfully readable history of the development of the oil age: how the world came from a point where if you had energy it was either biomass—that is wood—or coal, to a point where oil was the dominant source of energy. It was probably never more than fifty percent of total energy worldwide but it has been the most traded energy commodity and it changed the nature of geopolitics over the course of a hundred years from around 1890 to late in the twentieth century. It’s only the rise of shale oil in the US that has reduced crude oil’s central role in world politics. And a lot about the characters of the people who were the developers of oil in the early days. There’s a fascinating chapter in this book about John D. Rockefeller and how he differed from the conventional entrepreneur. We would think of someone like Rockefeller as probably good at running oil rigs and drilling them quickly and selecting the right areas, but what he was was actually an exceptional manager. His success came more from monopolising the means of transport of oil than from the extraction of oil in the first place.” Read more...

The best books on Energy Transitions

Chris Goodall, Environmentalist