For the past nine months, I have been working on a project that is especially meaningful to me.
My son, Luke, has a degree in history, and for years I had wanted to write a book tracing the development of energy in America. Eventually, we decided to combine his historical perspective with my decades of experience in the energy sector.
The result is American Energy: A History of Power, Progress, and Change.
The Kindle and paperback editions are now available, and both have already reached #1 among new releases in Amazon’s Oil and Energy category. The hardcover edition should follow within the next few days.
The book tells the story of how energy shaped the United States. We begin with wood and coal, move through the rise of oil and natural gas, and then examine nuclear power, renewables, and the technologies that may define the next chapter. But this is not simply a book about fuels and technologies. It is about how access to energy transformed transportation, industry, cities, agriculture, standards of living, and ultimately America’s place in the world.
One thing we wanted to avoid was turning the book into an argument for one energy source over another. Energy history is much more interesting than that. Every major transition has involved tradeoffs. New technologies solve old problems while often creating new ones. Some energy sources rise because they are cleaner or more efficient. Others succeed because they are cheaper, more abundant, easier to transport, or better suited to the infrastructure of their time.
That broader perspective is especially important today, when energy debates are often reduced to slogans. Understanding how we arrived at the current system makes it much easier to think clearly about where we may be headed next.
This is my second book and Luke’s first, and writing it together was one of the most rewarding parts of the project. I was able to share some of what I have learned during my career, while Luke brought a historian’s eye to the forces and decisions that shaped America’s energy development.
If you are interested in energy, history, technology, or simply in understanding how modern America came to be powered the way it is, I hope you will give American Energy a look. The Kindle and paperback editions are available now, with the hardcover coming shortly.
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