Fans of the author’s previous books will appreciate the snappy prose and plethora of well-told anecdotes. The precise details of the first Saudi oil shipment to the US, for example (in 1948), or the Vietnamese territorial claim in the South China Sea (1933) might seem geeky and dull. But as related by Yergin, they are revealing and apposite.

Yergin’s selection follows the contours of the fossil fuel economy, as seen from the point of view of the major oil and gas suppliers...But what about the rest? If energy is the theme, why does Yergin concentrate only on the producers? Oil and gas are worthless without demand. But the world’s big consumers — India, Europe and Japan — barely figure in his book.

At a time when solid facts and reasoned arguments are in retreat, Daniel Yergin rides to the rescue. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author and energy savant is armed to the teeth with enough telling statistics to sink an oil tanker.

We are...in a climate emergency. But you’d never know that from Daniel Yergin’s new book...written in magisterial mode, staring down from the heights of history at the great men who make it.

... what looks like the book for this moment...Alas, it does not quite deliver.

This is, at heart, a very American tale of buccaneering, can-do spirit.

... an ambitious, pithy survey of the evolving landscape of oil and gas that squeezes in vignettes of a 15th century Chinese navigator, intra-OPEC feuds, and Vladimir Putin’s pique at U.S. frackers.

Yet in a narrative as wide-ranging as this, it’s perhaps inevitable that some truly impactful figures fail to get their due.

The latest on global energy geopolitics from the pen of an expert.

Yergin provides a lucid, judicious overview of global energy and its discontents, with colorful though not always relevant historical background. But there’s not much new, and the basic picture is of a world where energy is abundant, cheap, widely available, and therefore not a coveted prize. The result is a well-informed yet surprisingly ho-hum rundown of how energy issues affect world affairs..