Winner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction, this book is a comprehensive history of one of the commodities that powers the world--oil. Founded in the 19th-century, the oil industry began producing kerosene for lamps and progressed to gasoline. Huge personal fortunes arose from it, and whole nations sprung out of the power politics of the oil wells. This account sweeps from early 'robber barons' like John D. Rockefeller, to the oil crisis of the 1970s, through to the Gulf War.