Energy: A Human History

"Yes. He, like me and my book, was sponsored by the Sloan Foundation to which we’re very thankful. Rhodes is a social scientist, not a physical scientist. This is probably the most recent of the books, it’s from 2018. I was fascinated by this book because I’m an energy geek. I’m working on the fourth edition of another book of mine, Energy, Environment, and Climate . I’m really into energy because energy is one of the things that distinguishes us humans from other animals. We use a lot of energy that is coming from outside our own bodies. So Rhodes wrote this history of energy. The book has three sections. The first is called “Power,” and it talks about wood and steam engines and early railroads. What was most fascinating to me was the early chapters, about the development of the very earliest steam engines. I learned all kinds of things I didn’t know, for example, that the early steam engine inventors assumed the only way to make motion with steam was to make some steam, then cool it down and create a vacuum, and have atmospheric pressure push on something to make it move. It took a long time for them to realize, and to get the technology to build up higher pressures of steam. There are stories about how the railroads developed. They were all in England initially. They were wooden railed things that were intended to get products, in particular coal, from the coalfields to London. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . Then it’s got a section called “Light,” which talks about the use of gas for illumination, like the lamplighters in Mary Poppins singing the lamp lighter song. He writes about the development of other so-called “burning fluids.” Whale oil was used and became very valuable. It almost put a number of whale species to extinction. Then he talks about early petroleum and electricity. His third section is called “New Fires.” There’s a lot about the automobile and the different paths it could have taken. There were steam-powered automobiles, there were all-electrics like there are today again. None of them made it in relation to the fossil-fueled automobile. He talks about oil and pipelines. Nuclear energy makes a brief appearance. Then he goes on about wood, wind and solar. And then he ends up, again, looking at nuclear energy. Rhodes happens to be, I think, a supporter of nuclear energy and would like to see it be more prominent and help solve the climate problem. This book does not cover a lot of nuclear energy and I don’t think it covers it particularly well, but it does cover some. It is just a fascinating study of the history of energy, particularly in Europe and North America. You do. You have to look at nuclear in contrast with other forms of energy. It is. His earlier book on the history of the Manhattan Project and atomic bomb is very readable too. He’s a prolific writer."