Introduction

Hailed by The New York Times as "a book that must be read to understand the first thing about the role of oil in modern history", Yergin's bestselling Pulitzer Prize-winner has been made into an exciting 8-part miniseries to air on PBS in January 1993. 32 pages of photos.

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Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Oil on the Brain: The Beginning

There was the matter of the missing $526.08.

A professor's salary in the 1850s was hardly generous, and in the quest for extra income, Benjamin Silliman, Jr., the son of a great American chemist and himself a distinguished professor of chemistry at Yale University, had taken on an outside research project for a fee totaling $526.08. He had been retained in 1854 by a group of promoters and businessmen, but, though he had completed the project, the promised fee was not forthcoming. Silliman, his ire rising, wanted to know where the money was. His anger was aimed at the leaders of the investor group, in particular, at George Bissell, a New York lawyer, and James Townsend, president of a bank in New Haven. Townsend, for his part, had sought to keep a low profile, as he feared it would look most inappropriate to his depositors if they learned he was involved in so speculative a venture. ... view entire excerpt...

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»	New York Times Book Club November 2004 Book Selection

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