Daniel Yergin

storytelling, those are things that are very much in my interest.

And 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.

And as I was writing the prize, it was just...

I didn't intend to do all of that, but the discoveries, just one thing led to another, and I would just be amazed and think, this is an incredible story and no one knows it.

And I did see how somehow in my mind, I did not do a detailed outline, but the pieces kind of came together in this larger narrative that located oil in this larger context of the 20th century.

And because it made it clear how central oil was as a way to understand the 20th century.

Well, I think maybe it attracts those are the ones who are successful.

It takes a lot of, you know, willpower and perseverance.

I mean, clearly Rockefeller had an idea of what to do, but he was also creating a new kind of business organization as he's doing it and a new kind of industry at the same time that he was doing it.

And then if we jump ahead to this guy, George Mitchell, who's more responsible than anybody else for the shale revolution that has transformed the current position of the United States in the world, he...

I mean, he kept at it for 18 years when people told him, you're wasting your money, you're wasting your time.

He said, well, it's my money and I'll waste it.

But one of the things that comes through in the book is the power of willpower.

Well, I think actually what I think about what we saw with the oil industry, then what we saw with the automobile industry in the 1920s is kind of what we saw with the internet at the beginning of the 21st century.

Another example of that that always struck me is the movie industry.

At one point you have guys who are showing these sort of silent movies over vaudeville houses for five cents and 15 years later they're living in mansions on Long Island and have chauffeurs.

So it is striking to sort of see these businesses that come from nowhere and then they just take off and gravitate and develop so quickly when people grab hold in 10 or 15 years.

You know, I was writing something comparing the energy position of the United States in the 80s and today.

If you go back, you know, it's a while back, certainly.