Energy: A Human History.

• Author: Fitzgerald, Timothy
• Position: Book review

Energy: A Human History by Richard Rhodes. (Simon & Schuster, 2018). 464 pages, ISBN 978-1-5011-0535-7.

As an accomplished popular science writer, Richard Rhodes brings his expertise to bear and provides an accessible but detailed history of energy use since about 1600. The volume is particularly strong as a history of technological improvements and innovation that have unlocked successive new sources of heat, power, light, and work. The accessible narrative is a feature, but make no mistake, it is underlain by considerable research. The fifty (50) page bibliography is one of the greatest resources for academic readers. By comprehensively collecting the pertinent history of many sources and uses of energy, the curious researcher seeking a narrative anecdote or a presentation hook will find ample primary and authoritative source material. This non-technical volume offers valuable and well-crafted background information for energy economists seeking to frame current research questions and policy issues. While the history is perhaps more "English-speaking" than "human," since many of the technological improvements occurred in Great Britain and the United States.

The narrative starts in Elizabethan England, where concern about a shortage of wood as a strategic energy supply was allayed by the wider adoption of coal. The book opens with a vignette about the high value of lumber as a construction material, which made its use as a fuel particularly dear and encouraged the use of coal as a substitute. Wood has the advantage of being easy to collect and burn, whereas coal must be mined and transported from its source, and also requires more fuss to ignite and manage. However, coal delivers greater energy density and a higher heat rate. In addition to this efficiency, using coal also allowed English forests to be saved for strategic uses without substitutes, like providing the essential material for the Royal Navy.

Even before it built a substantial market share, the easily accessible coal in England was mined out. Water flooded pits and drifts and made it impossible to affordably dig more coal. Enter a string of sundry characters working to develop and apply new technologies in a way to dry out coal mines. Rhodes follows the intellectual thread from Denis Papin to Thomas Savery and finally Thomas Newcomen, whose coal-hungry beast of an engine was the first functional steam power. It allowed coal mine owners to pump fast enough to stay ahead of...