Why read The Birth of Energy?

Book cover of The Birth of Energy: Fossil Fuels, Thermodynamics, and the Politics of Work

Book description

In The Birth of Energy Cara New Daggett traces the genealogy of contemporary notions of energy back to the nineteenth-century science of thermodynamics to challenge the underlying logic that informs today's uses of energy. These early resource-based concepts of power first emerged during the Industrial Revolution and were tightly bound…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Birth of Energy as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Jeremy Bendik-Keymer

Author

Daggett’s award-winning book is a good example of a turn in political studies to understand the roots of our environmental problems by grasping how the way we organize society was shaped during early capitalism, colonialism, and the industrial revolution. Her book is also an example of the turn to energy politics which will define this century for some time. Check out the way this book uses history and old steampunk-esque documents to show us the bizarre dreams of the industrial revolution as these were tied to exploiting laborers for the sake of the wealth generation of the few!

From Jeremy's list on The best books on how we got here with climate change and mass extinction – and where to go.