num_pages: 480
description: Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning author Richard Rhodes reveals the fascinating history behind energy transitions over timewood to coal to oil to electricity and beyond.People have lived and died businesses have prospered and failed and nations have risen to world power and declined all over energy challenges. Ultimately the history of these challenges tells the story of humanity itself.Through an unforgettable cast of characters Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes explains how wood gave way to coal and coal made room for oil as we now turn to natural gas nuclear power and renewable energy. Rhodes looks back on five centuries of progress through such influential figures as Queen Elizabeth I King James I Benjamin Franklin Herman Melville John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford.In Energy  Rhodes highlights the successes and failures that led to each breakthrough in energy production; from animal and waterpower to the steam engine from internal-combustion to the electric motor. He addresses how we learned from such challenges mastered their transitions and capitalized on their opportunities. Rhodes also looks at the current energy landscape with a focus on how wind energy is competing for dominance with cast supplies of coal and natural gas. He also addresses the specter of global warming and a population hurtling towards ten billion by 2100.Human beings have confronted the problem of how to draw life from raw material since the beginning of time. Each invention each discovery each adaptation brought further challenges and through such transformations we arrived at where we are today. In Rhodess singular style Energy details how this knowledge of our history can inform our way tomorrow.
language: English
title: Energy: A Human History
publisher: Simon & Schuster