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Summary: Educated myself to no end with this book. Very impressed!
Review: As a young person with little knowledge of the world's history over the last 50 years, I was very impressed by Yergin's writing style and knowledge. The first 12 chapters give a history lesson on the evolveing relationship between the enterprise and gov't and he finishes with an impressive chapter on the future of the marketplace. If you are a raving fan of government, don't read this book. To all others, enjoy :-)
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Summary: Should be found in the bookshelves of students
Review: As an Easterner, I could not understand the impact of F. Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom" on economic development when I first read that book. Fortunately, "The Commanding Heights" provides me with the answer - Planned economy becomes the mainstream of Western societies after World War II and the system had brought these countries economic prosperity for several decades. There was a danger that the policy makers would think the system is a " cure-all" medicine. Free marketers such as Margaret Thatcher and Milton Friedman had to battle under that tough environment. Hayek's work however opens up the mind of Mrs. Thatcher and provides the foundation for the Renaissance of individualism.
"The Commanding Heights" is a book of economic history after World War II. The book covers the economic transformation of regions or countries such as U.S.A., Western Europe, Central Europe, Britain, China, India, Latin America and Southeast Asia. The background and achievement of key politicans and economists are also contained extensively. The messages of the books are clear - Free market economic system is better than planned economy and government's role should be shifted from market player to referee.
While I agree that the book is highly readable, some pieces are missing, still. Readers cannot find story of developed African countries such as South Africa and Egypt. If you want to know the economic history of the Middle East, you must be prepared to be disappointed. In addition, as the book is descriptive in nature, in-depth analysis on why centrally planning suddenly turns sour is lacking. These are my reasons that the book is rated as a four-star instead of five-star publication.
In all, the authors have done a tremendous job in the subject. This book should be short-listed as one of the textbooks for students studying economics or history.
Rating: 
Summary: Enjoyable
Review: As someone with no formal (or even much informal) economics background, I found this book to be a reasonable synopsis of what's been happening over the last 40 years. I liked the broad coverage, and the little anecdotes told along the way kept it interesting. At the same time, it did get a bit repetitive, and the authors' opinions about the strength of the Asian economies were a little hard to believe given the current circumstances.
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Summary: Very good read but flawed
Review: As we are used from the authors ( The Prize and their work in CERA) we get a very well written and well researched expose. It is by far not as dry as most books on this subject and actually it is quite light reading.It starts of well by demonstrating the rise and decline of Government dominated economies in the West as well as in other parts of the world. They describe the initial successes and later failures. The transition to the free market economies we have seen in the past two decades is described well. Unfortunately the book does little more than that...description. In particular the idea that we have fixed everything now with the global free markets radiates from some of the pages on the Chicago/Harvard experts. The questions posed in the introduction on e.g. how to deal in terms of social and moral systems with the new economic order do not get attention. Instead we gate the same feeling as with reading Fukuyama's End of the World History which at that time was pretentious and looks utterly ridiculous today. It is not only the current economic crisis but also the imbalances the new system has brought ( eg overproduction of commodities, loss of control over currencies, destabilized capital flows) that has not been identified as possible outcomes of the free market policy. This leaves alone the many disasters the world has seen with privatization. Therefore, a very good and entertaing read but a bit short on the thought provoking side.
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Summary: Our objectives in writing the "Commanding Heights."
Review: By Daniel Yergin Books start in unexpected places. The Commanding Heights began, in part, in the outdoor Izmailova market that sprawls over acres on the outskirts of Moscow. Everything seems to be on sale-from Czarist swords and pins with Lenin on them, to carpets from the Caucasus, South Korean electronics and Persian kittens. And, of course, the inevitable wooden dolls, representing everything from peasant grandmothers to the Harlem Globetrotters. A couple of years ago, I was wandering between the stalls in Izmailova with Brian Fall, at that time the British ambassador to Russia, who observed how much easier it would have been for the Russians if communism had collapsed in the 1970s. Then, because of the "mixed economy" consensus in the western world, it would have been easier to have kept intact their state-owned companies-and just dropped the communist banners. Fall's comment, offered amidst this most visible sign of communism's collapse, struck me forcefully. My mind kept returning to that thought on the flight home the next day. A major intellectual shift had occurred in just two decades. Simply put, the world, to a striking degree, had changed its mind. A similar thought hit me around the same time, sitting in a conference room in Madrid with a group of economic and energy ministers from countries around the world. They were discussing how to get multinational companies to invest in their countries, bringing capital, technology, skills, and access to global markets. As I listened, I thought that it was not all that long ago that the major aim was to expel the multinationals, not woo them. Here was the critical mass for a new book. Something profound really is happening. It is a shift in ideas that is transforming the global economy-and the daily lives of people in every part of the planet. Governments are selling off trillions of dollars of assets. Socialists are now promoting capitalism. Borders are eroding. The nature of work is changing. So is the character of the s! ocial safety net and welfare systems. My Cambridge Energy Research Associates partner of 15 years, Joe Stanislaw, and I decided to write a book making sense of this great transformation. Where did it come from? What is driving it? Where will it go? We eventually summarized the issue in two questions-one long and one short: "Why are we moving from an era in which the state sought to seize and control the commanding heights of the economy to an era in which ideas-free markets, deregulation, privatization, competition-are capturing the commanding heights of world economic thinking?" And "will there be a swing back?" Our initial plan was to write an extended essay, but somehow it grew over three years into a narrative history, filled with people and dramatic conflict. That requires much more research, but it also makes it much more vivid for readers, and better captures the combination of powerful forces and accidents that shape history. To be sure, we did not come at this from nowhere. When I went for my job interview at the Harvard Business School in 1976, the dean asked me why I was interested in coming to the school. "I'm interested in capitalism," I said. He looked at me quizzically. "We don't talk much about capitalism here," he finally replied. But the collapse of communism and "market making" has in the years resuscitated discussions about capitalism and the essentials that comprise markets. Stanislaw and I interviewed 90 people for the book-ranging from Margaret Thatcher to Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamad. We were looking for connections. What changed the mind of Bolivia's President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozado, who initiated shock therapy in a desperate effort to stave off hyperinflation? His reply: When he heard Deng Xiaoping's observation that he, Deng, didn't care whether a cat was black or white, so long as it caught mice. What counts is not ideology, but what works. We wanted to understand the impact of inflation, Latin America's debt crisis a! nd "lost decade," the fall of the Soviet Union-as well as the impact of information technology and trade liberalization. It ended up a work of considerable sweep-from the Potsdam Conference in 1945 through the present Asian financial crisis-and with a look into the next century. We did not want to claim that we had all the answers, but we wanted to frame what we hoped would be the most important questions-and do so in a way that was both provocative and promoted debate and thought. Daniel Yergin is president of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. He received the Pulitzer Prize for The Prize: the Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power.
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Summary: Offers insightful understanding of globalization.
Review: Daniel Yergin provides the reader extraordinary insight into contemporary globalization. In a masterful, sweeping work that encompasses economic and social history of the post-war era, Yergin (who won the Pulitzer Prize for "The Prize," his study of the oil industry) and his co-author Joseph Stanislaw help us understand how economies around the world, but especially in the third world, are abandoning the old faith in big government and are embracing the marketplace. But Yergin and Stanislaw also warn that the marketplace -- laissez-faire -- is fraught with perils for countries that don't have sound governance and indigenous institutions and entrepreneurs who are able to function responsibly in an increasingly interdependent world. I found the book's analysis particularly lucid; the chronology at the end, which details the evolution of economic theory as well as cites political trends, should be especially useful to students. This is a book I'd recommend highly for laymen and scholars alike.
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Summary: Did You Say "A Lively Economics Book"?
Review: Don't be scared, Commanding Heights, in every sense, is a lively yet informative economics book. A text for everyone, from the main street person to Milton Friedman The writers, Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, are both players of the business world, and Ph.D. holders (Yergin's from Cambridge University, where he was Marshall Scholar, and Stanislaw holds a Ph.D. from Edinburgh University). Furthermore, Yergin's book "The Prize" was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. One could only expect a dry, scholarly frightening work from the two, but, surprisingly, Commanding Heights is anything but intimidating. This is a very good introduction to 20th century's economic plans and philosophies- from Gandhi's "swadeshi" to Thatcherism of the late 1970s and 80s to the 'global economy' of the 90s and present. The book's treatment of Thatcher and Thatcherism is very good and readable, and almost enlightening. The portrayal of Margaret Thatcher is illuminating, if not flattering for the subject. The Thatcher of the book is not the evil witch of left-wing politics, but that of a hard-working, decent and uncompromising woman from a lower middle class background. Her (political) partnership with Joseph Keith and her devotion to Keith's plan is intriguing, and her David-and-Goliath battles with the 'establishment' is inspirational. ("I am the rebel head of an establishment government" she once boasted). Keynesians beware- this book might turn you into a Thatcherite! Another highlight is the book's treatment of Latin America's economic dogmas and policies. Here, Chapter Nine of the book, it reads like a dark, compelling, political thriller authored by Vargas Llosa (Not surprisingly, Llosa's name appears in this book). Like the rest of the book, this chapter is highly fascinating and lively. With great clarity and intelligence, this is a highly recommended 'big' book. A great companion as we face a new century. READ IT!
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Summary: An informative, well-documented, and enticing account
Review: Dr. Yergin identifies with extreme vertical depth, the challenges that await policy-makers around the world. Extremely well-written, 'The Commanding Heights' is a must-read for economics and political science scholars, and government officials alike.
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Summary: GREAT BOOK
Review: Extraordinary ! Hard to write, easy to read ! Academic approach with a non-academic language ! While you are reading this book, you are learning without realizing ! This book makes learning economics enjoyable.
A good look at the battle between government and market forces in the history of economy. New economies, emerging markets, economic thoughts, governments, all of them are included in this book. From China to Argentina, you can trace the history of economic battle between the governments and market forces. All I can say is , if you are interested in world politics and world economics, if you are running for presidency, if you are a businessman or bureaucrat, you need this book in order to get some lessons from the past.
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Summary: Compelling view of global economy
Review: Following "The Prize," Dan Yergin takes on the entire world economy and deftly distills the important from the irrevelant. This is an excellent analysis and a reasonably easy read. It is markedly superior to a "competing" work: "The Lexus and the olive tree." Business students can find a good introduction to the struggle between free and fair trade.
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