Energy

A Human History

By: Richard Rhodes

Narrated by: Jacques Roy

Length: 11 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning author Richard Rhodes reveals the fascinating history behind energy transitions over time - wood 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 water power 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 toward 10 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 Rhodes’ singular style, Energy details how this knowledge of our history can inform our way tomorrow.

©2018 Richard Rhodes (P)2018 Simon & Schuster Audio

Amazing

A whirlwind synopsis regarding the advancement of civilization and the crucial, yet often overlooked role, that energy played. Highly recommend!

I cannot finish due to the accents

The narrator has a nice and clear speaking voice, but he constantly forces these awful accents on the listener; they are bad and distract far more than the value that the narrator apparently thinks they add. It's too bad, the content of the book is interesting.

Goes Off The Rails At The End

Mr Rhodes is an wonderful, knowledgeable writer, and this book is both entertaining and informative... until the last two chapters. At that point, it suddenly veers into a screed against the anti-nuclear movement of the 60’s and 70’s, complete with the author’s personal theories of the psychological motivations that brought Rachel Carson to write Silent Spring (she was undergoing chemo and radiation therapy for breast cancer) and an attempt to discredit Obama’s science advisor by linking him to a racist professor at Cal Tech.

Mr Rhodes obviously knows a lot about nuclear power (he wrote The Making of the Atomic Bomb, an excellent book), but I think he would have been a better advocate for rehabilitating the nuclear industry, and would have written a better book, by making rational arguments instead of engaging in amateur psychology and conspiracy theory.

great but incomplete

overall loved it. my 1 critique is some parts are epically detailed (history or lighing, history of steam power) while other sections se really rushed (nuclear solar, wind) and other sections are basically non-existent (history of the grid, animal power, hydropower). it's almost a more accurate title would be "a history of power until about 1960"

No more accents, please!

Hello to Audible narrators, Audible producers, Audible editors: I love your books. I love your service. But please please PLEASE don't use foreign accents when reading nonfiction. It's painfully distracting. This is a terrific book. But, just to take one example: the French inventor Denis Papin did not speak English with a bad French accent. He spoke French. We know that, and we don't need to be reminded of it. When you're reading an English translation of his words, it doesn't help to say it in a bad French accent. Or a good French accent. Or a French accent of any kind. It actually makes it very hard to concentrate on the text. I'm begging you not to do this with other nonfiction books. I might not have ordered this book had I realized how much of this I would have to listen to.

But it is a good book!

Nicely presented story but poor performance

The story is developed nicely but it's very difficult to keep focused as the voice of the nurator is flat and monotonous.

Fascinating story

This is a fascinating story about many different sources of energy. The narrator is gifted at different accents, but his overall tone is rather somnolent.

The human condition

From folly to perseverance...this book has it all as Rhodes paints the story of energy and how it has impacted humankind and the planet. Roy delivers the audio in splendid form.

400 years of energy supporting human society .

Excellent book by an overly researched & well-traveled author, details abound throughout which will occasionally surprise and delight. The reading performance (Audible) is well paced with no pronunciation mishaps.

Encyclopedic in scope

I always enjoy Rhodes extensively researched books and his perspective on the history. This begins with wood burning in England and ends with current debates about fossil fuels, nuclear power, and the alternatives. I think a broader and more independent perspective is needed on energy issues today. I wish Rhodes had written a whole book on part 3. He doesn't seem to shrink from controversy.

As for the accents, I thought they were pretty well done and spiced up the narration a bit. I was more irked by his pronunciation of giga- and Willamette, but, overall, I thought it was professional and well done.