Author: Richard Rhodes File Type: epub 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.**ReviewA magesterial history...a tour de force of popular science, which is no surprise from this author.Kirkus, Starred Review Rhodes doesnt minimize the downsides of advances, both human and environmental, yet, on the whole, this is a beautifully written, often inspiring saga of ingenuity and progress, ideal for general readers. Immensely engaging, trusted, and best-selling, Rhodes will attract the usual avid interest as he brings facts, context, and clarity to a key, often contentious subject.BOOKLIST, Starred Review Once again, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and author Richard Rhodes takes on entangled issues around the use of science and technology and makes complicated matters more approachable. Rhodess study will appeal to many, not just technophiles. As always, he is an exceptionally engaging writer.Library Journal, Starred Review In this meticulously researched work, Rhodes brings his fascination with engineers, scientists and inventors along as he presents an often underappreciated history four centuries through the evolution of energy and how we use it.The New York Times Book Review RivetingMr. Rhodes has scored another masterpiece.The Wall Street Journal Energyis both a work of history and a passionately written moral tale...Rhodess hope that a critical look at past energy technologies will benefit those of the future is heartening.Science Magazine Rhodes delivers brilliantly on the inner workings of steam engines and reactors, and his lively narrative takes readers on thrilling side trips... His fascinating tale will delight technology wonks and particularly appeal to inventors and discoverers.Publishers Weekly Energy is an excellent book that manages to be both entertaining and informative, and its likely to appeal to both science fans and those of us who only passed physics by the skin of our teeth. Its also a powerful look at the importance of science.NPR.ORG Richard Rhodes dazzling Energy A Human History tells a compulsively readable tale of human need, curiosity, ingenuity and arrogance... This exceptional book is required reading for anyone concerned about the human impact on the future of the world.Bookpage RivetingMr. Rhodes has scored another masterpiece.The Wall Street Journal About the Author Richard Rhodes is the author of numerous books and the winner of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and National Book Critics Circle Award. He graduated from Yale and received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Author: Deborah J. Shepherd File Type: epub Arthurian legends are immensely popular and well known despite the lack of reliable documentation about this time period in Britain. As a result, historians depend upon archaeologists to accurately describe life during these two centuries of turmoil when Britons suffered displacement by Germanic immigrants. Daily Life in Arthurian Britain examines cultural change in Britain through the fifth and sixth centuriesanachronistically known as The Dark Ageswith a focus on the fate of Romano-British culture, demographic change in the northern and western border lands, and the impact of the Germanic immigrants later known as the Anglo-Saxons. The book coalesces many threads of current knowledge and opinion from leading historians and archaeologists, describing household composition, rural and urban organization, food production, architecture, fashion, trades and occupations, social classes, education, political organization, warfare, and religion in Arthurian times. The few available documentary sources are analyzed for the cultural and historical value of their information.