Daniel Yergin Popular Books

Daniel Yergin Biography & Facts

Daniel Howard Yergin (born February 6, 1947) is an American author and consultant within the energy and economic sectors. Yergin is vice chairman of S&P Global. He was formerly vice chairman of IHS Markit, which merged with S&P in 2022. He founded Cambridge Energy Research Associates, which IHS Markit acquired in 2004. He has authored or co-authored several books on energy and world economics, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power, (1991) The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World (2011), and The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations (2020). Yergin's articles and op-eds on energy, history, and the economy have been published in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Financial Times. All of Yergin's books have been drafted in long-hand. Currently a director on entities such as the Council on Foreign Relations and the United States Energy Association, he is also a trustee of the Brookings Institution and a long-term advisor to several U.S. administrations, as well as chairman of the annual CERAWeek energy conference. Early life and education Yergin was born on February 6, 1947 in Los Angeles, California. His father Irving Yergin worked at Warner Brothers and was editor of The Hollywood Reporter and a former journalist in Chicago. His mother Naomi Yergin was a sculptor and painter. He attended Beverly Hills High School. He received his BA from Yale University in 1968, where he wrote for the Yale Daily News and was founder of The New Journal in 1967. He received his MA in 1970 and his PhD in international history from Cambridge University, where he was a Marshall Scholar. While at Cambridge, he wrote for various British magazines as well as The Atlantic, where he was a contributing editor, and The New York Times Magazine. He has honorary doctorates from Dartmouth College, Colorado School of Mines, University of Houston, and the University of Missouri. Career 1970s Early in his career, Yergin worked as a contributing editor for New York magazine. Through 1980, he was a lecturer at the Harvard Business School and, until 1985, a lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School. Yergin's first book, Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State (1977), was partly based upon his doctoral dissertation and focused on the origins of the Cold War. In the mid-1970s, while a post-doctoral fellow, he began to take a particular interest in energy in his writing. Basing the book on four years of research, with Robert B. Stobaugh he co-authored and co-edited Energy Future: The Report of the Energy Project at the Harvard Business School in 1979. According to the Los Angeles Times, the book "caused a considerable stir with its optimistic view of the possibilities of energy conservation and such alternative sources as solar power." It proved to be a The New York Times bestseller, ultimately selling 300,000 copies in six languages. Within its first year of release, Yergin and Stobaugh were called to Washington, D.C. several times to testify before Congressional committees. He also advised James Schlesinger, the first US energy secretary, around the time of the Iranian revolution. According to Reuters, "since then he has given advice to every administration." 1980s–1990s He founded Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) with Jamey Rosenfield in 1982 with the purchase of a $2 file cabinet from The Salvation Army. With Yergin as president, the energy research and consulting firm was created as a "quasi think-tank and source of energy industry analysis." Yergin is arguably best known for his fourth book, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (1991). It became a number-one bestseller that won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1992 and the Eccles Prize for the best book on economics for a general audience, selling around 700,000 copies in 17 languages. The book was adapted into a PBS/BBC series seen by around 100 million viewers both domestically and internationally, with Yergin as the principal storyteller. His next book was Russia 2010 and What It Means for the World (1993), written with Thane Gustafson, which provided scenarios for the development of Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. 2000s–2010s His 2002 book The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy, written with Joseph Stanislaw, described in narrative form the struggle over the "frontier" between governments and markets and the rise of globalization. In the "first major PBS series on business in more than a decade," he led the team that created an Emmy-winning six-hour PBS/BBC television series based on the book, serving as executive producer and co-writer and interviewing individuals such as Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, Vicente Fox, and Mikhail Gorbachev. CERA was acquired by the information company IHS Inc. in 2004, with Yergin becoming an executive of the combined company and remaining chairman of CERA. Described as a sequel to his book The Prize, Yergin's The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World (2011) continued his history of the global oil industry but also addressed energy security, natural gas, electric power, climate change and the search for renewable sources of energy. Like his previous books, it was drafted in long-hand. In 2011 it was shortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award. 2020s In September 2020, Yergin published The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations. Viewpoints and research Yergin's articles and op-eds on energy, history, and the economy have been published in a variety of publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, the Financial Times, and Forbes. He has also been interviewed about energy policy and international politics on various television programs. In 2003 he became CNBC's global energy expert, which he continued to do for a decade, and in September 2011 he appeared on The Colbert Report to discuss wind and solar power. In a 2011 essay published in The Wall Street Journal, Yergin criticized predictions of imminent peak oil. Instead of a peak, Yergin predicted that future oil production would plateau as increasing prices moderate demand and stimulate production. He also addressed peak oil in a chapter in The Quest entitled "Is the World Running Out of Oil?" In 2019, Yergin and former U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz led a major 229-page study, Advancing the Landscape of Clean Energy Innovation, which was conducted by IHS Markit and Energy Futures Initiative for the Breakthrough Energy coalition, led by Bill Gates. The study identified ten areas for transformational energy breakthroughs. Axios quoted Yergin, "The purpose of the report is to provide a framework and a guide to people who want to invest in clean energy innovation." Yergin c.... Discover the Daniel Yergin popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Daniel Yergin books.

Best Seller Daniel Yergin Books of 2024

  • The Great Race synopsis, comments

    The Great Race

    Levi Tillemann

    The Great Race recounts the exciting story of a centurylong battle among automakers for market share, profit, and technological dominanceand the thrilling race to build the car of ...

  • A Pipeline Runs Through It synopsis, comments

    A Pipeline Runs Through It

    Keith Fisher

    'Fascinating revelations' Max Hastings, Sunday Times'Wonderfully detailed and colourful' Steven Poole, Daily Telegraph'The book I have long been waiting for... Essential reading' M...

  • The Prize synopsis, comments

    The Prize

    Daniel Yergin

    Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and hailed as “the best history of oil ever written” by Business Week, Daniel Yergin’s “spellbinding…irresistible” (The New York Times) account of the ...

  • Out of the Desert synopsis, comments

    Out of the Desert

    Ali Al-Naimi

    The extraordinary memoir of global oil's former central bankerAli AlNaimi is the former Saudi oil minister and OPEC kingpin a position he held for the two decades between August ...

  • Windfall synopsis, comments

    Windfall

    Meghan L. O’Sullivan

    Windfall is the boldest profile of the world’s energy resources since Daniel Yergin’s The Quest, asserting that the new energy abundancedue to oil and gas resources once deemed too...

  • 99 Maps to Save the Planet synopsis, comments

    99 Maps to Save the Planet

    Katapult

    'Terrifying yet funny, surprising yet predictable, simple yet poignant' Chris PackhamA shocking but informative, eyecatching and witty book of maps that illustrate the perilous sta...