The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power is Daniel Yergin's 1990 history of the global petroleum industry from the 1850s through 1990. The Prize became a bestseller, helped by its release date in December 1990, four months after the invasion of Kuwait ordered by Saddam Hussein and one month before the U.S.-led coalition began the Gulf War to oust Iraqi troops from that country. The book eventually went on to win a Pulitzer Prize.

The Prize has been called the "definitive" history of the oil industry, even a "bible".

Popular success

In 1992 The Prize won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction; it has been translated into fourteen languages. Now out of print in hardcover, The Prize was published in a paperback edition (ISBN 0-671-79932-0) that was released at the end of 1992, and is currently in print. The Prize is often cited as essential background reading for students of the history of petroleum. Prof. Joseph R. Rudolph Jr. said in Library Journal, for example:

Written by one of the foremost U.S. authorities on energy, it is a major work in the field, replete with enough insight to satisfy the scholar and sufficient concern with the drama and colorful personalities in the history of oil to capture the interest of the general public.