Daniel Yergin is the founder and chairperson of the Information Handling Services Energy Resource Association. | Emily Chambers/The Daily Cougar
For Pulitzer Prize-winning author Daniel Yergin, the hardest part of writing his most recent book was figuring out how to finish it he said on Monday during a lecture at Michael J. Cemo Hall.
“Professors of the audience, you all know that the hardest part of writing a book is writing the conclusion because you have to say what this all means,” Yergin said.
Yergin, an energy expert and chairman of the IHS Cambridge Energy Research Association, visited UH to discuss his recent New York Times best seller, “The Quest: Energy, Security and the Remaking of the Modern World,” which according to the book’s website, presents “a story that spans the energies on which our society has been built and the new resources that are competing to replace them.”
Yergin said that he knew how to start it but as the times kept changing, so did his book, making it difficult to come to a concrete conclusion, but he refers to “The Quest” as an “optimistic book.”
“The Quest” picks up the energy story where Yergin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Prize” left off in the early 90s, with everything “hunky dory,” as Yergin said in a a recent interview with KUHF’s Andrew Schneider.
Both of Yergin’s books address the ways that energy will be the future engine of global economic and political change.
“Eventually we’ll be gone and you will be here forever,” said Yergin referring to the energy.
Facing Stephen Colbert
During the event, Yergin described his experience promoting his book on “The Colbert Report.” He said he was a little nervous when going on camera with Stephen Colbert and that their conversation before going on calmed him down.
“Probably the single most important experience I had is when I went on the Colbert show — that was a big deal,” Yergin said. “Stephen Colbert came up to me when I was a little nervous and said ‘the whole point of this exercise is to make a fool out of you, you got to understand that my TV character is an idiot’ so that relaxed me”
