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Power Trip: From Oil Wells to Solar Cells---Our Ride to the Renewable Future | 
| Author: Amanda Little
Publisher: Harper
Category: Book
List Price: $25.99
Buy Used: $4.74
as of 3/19/2010 00:19 CDT details
You Save: $21.25 (82%)
New (35) Used (18) from $4.74
Seller: hallstreetbookstore
Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 275644
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 464
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.6
ISBN: 0061353256
Dewey Decimal Number: 333.790973
EAN: 9780061353253
ASIN: 0061353256
Publication Date: October 1, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | ISBN13: 9780061353253 | | • | Condition: NEW | | • | Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. |
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Product Description
In the tradition of Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation and Thomas L. Friedmam's Hot, Flat, and Crowded, prominent journalist Amanda Little maps out the history and future of America's energy addiction in a wonk-free, big-picture, solutions-oriented adventure story. After covering the environment and energy beat for more than a decade, Amanda Little decided that the only way to really understand America's energy crisis was to travel into the heart of it. She embarks on a daring cross-country power trip, and describes in vivid, fast-paced prose the most extreme and exciting frontiers of our energy landscape. At her side we visit an offshore oil rig, the cornfields of Kansas, the Pentagon's fuel-logistics division, the Talladega Superspeedway, New York City's electrical grid, and laboratories creating the innovations of a clean-energy future. As Little explains, energy is everything: It grows our crops, fights our wars, makes our plastics and medicines, warms our homes, moves our products and vehicles, and animates our cities. How did we develop this insatiable appetite for fossil fuels? Little travels through history to track the evolution of America's energy addiction: the 1897 installation of the world's first power plant (a Thomas Edison-J. P. Morgan venture); the 1901 Spindletop gusher that threw open the era of cheap American fuel; FDR's encounter with a Saudi king that set the stage for our dependence on Middle Eastern oil; General Motors' early decision to sell big guzzlers rather than small, efficient cars. Little illustrates how abundant oil and coal built the American superpower—even as they posed political and environmental dangers to the nation and the world. More important, we learn how the same American ingenuity that got us into this mess can get us out of it. With next-generation candor and optimism, Little explores the most promising clean-energy solutions on the horizon, arguing that everything we know about our past teaches us that we can solve the problems of our future. Hard-hitting yet forward-thinking, Power Trip is a lively and impassioned travel guide for all readers trying to navigate our shifting landscape and a clear-eyed manifesto for the younger generations who are inheriting the earth.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 14
 Enjoyable read February 21, 2010
F. Thebault (Canada)
I liked the book in general, good information but too USA biased for my taste, although I suppose it is meant for an American audience.
Enjoyable read nevertheless.
 Readers Digest history of energy February 2, 2010
a guitarist (New York, New York USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is an informative overview of our energy history. Overall, it is an ok survey of the energy industry, but the writing style is that of a reporter/columnist and not an academic or historian.
The book is about a mile wide and inch deep overview of the power industry. If you are looking for something like "The Prize" (the best book on oil out there) for the whole industry, look elsewhere.
There is a lot of first person dialog that's annoying to read -("I looked at my salad, and realized the pears were from country x, the arugula from country y, the romaine from country z... I had NO idea I was eating a salad from all over the world.") There is a lot of rhetorical "questioning" that I got tired of quickly. ("I needed to know how my salad got here.")
Power Trip covers all the bases, but I'm not a huge fan of how it gets there.
 Bringing Strong Storytelling to Science January 30, 2010
Amely Greeven (Los Angeles, CA)
I've had the great good fortune of knowing this super-original woman writer personally, since her earliest days writing newspaper stories in New York City. So I can tell you that her book wowed me because it's an absolute embodiment of her in person.
Amanda Little can hold a room full of people rapt with huge, colorful, important, and totally hilarious stories of her real-life missions to places few of us dare to go (like zooming to the terrifying top of massive oil derricks--which she did while pregnant with her daughter).
So I wasn't surprised that this is a really gutsy, fast, fun book. Also, like her, it's both smart and (shocker in this doom/gloom moment) optimistic. I think it should be required reading--especially for the next generation.
As a fellow woman writer, I look to this author as a new role model for women in media, too. If you have young women in your life who want to write or do journalism, get them this book.
A wild level of applause for an outstanding work by this author January 28, 2010
Joel Feuer (new york city)
I proudly applaud the author for the outstanding effort that she placed into creating this phenomenal book, "Power Trip". I particularly enjoyed her examination of the usage of chemicals (which are a byproduct of oil) in foods for coloring, flavoring, and preservation, and her examination of how "kicking the oil habit" would entail changes in our lifestyles beyond jhow our homes will be heated, our electricity produced, and our cars to be powered.
The last chapter of the book is pages of footnotes, with links to appropriate web sites, and a lengthy bibliography, which not only allows me to seek further resources on the fascinating subject she wrote about, but also demonstrates the authoritative sources used to compile the manuscript. This is especially important for me, and I appreciate that she went through the efforts to include this in her book. Excellent job, I reccomend this book for intelligent and thoughtful reading.
How We Got Here, Where "Here" Is and Where We're Going January 26, 2010
Terry Sunday (El Paso, Texas United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
"Power Trip" is quite a rarity among books about the environment. It is, perhaps alone in the genre, a sober, balanced weighing of the positives and negatives of mankind's dependence on fossil fuels. It is well-researched, factual, comprehensive, non-hysterical and apolitical. Author Amanda Little has no apparent hidden agendas, no obvious axes to grind, and no perceivable motivations beyond presenting the facts behind today's acrimonious debates about petroleum and its byproducts. She does this very well. "Power Trip" is a significant, detailed, entertaining and highly readable book that everyone with an opinion about America's energy past, present or future should read.
I especially like the organization and structure of "Power Trip." The first part, "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Oil," contains seven chapters covering how the world got to where it is today in its dependence on oil and petroleum products. Each chapter is roughly 30 pages long. For example, Chapter 1, "Over a Barrel," describes the history of American and international oil industries from the first well in Pennsylvania to the latest deep-water drilling techniques. Chapter 3, "Road Hogs," takes a nonjudgmental (despite its title) look at the cars we drive, the roads we drive them on, and even at NASCAR racing. Chapter 4, "Plastic Explosive," is a fascinating survey of the literally tens of thousands of plastic products, all derived from petroleum, that fill every aspect of our lives today. This chapter is especially eye-opening for those who think we can quickly and easily wean ourselves from dependence on oil. It's not that easy...
The second part, "Greener Pastures," contains four chapters that present visions of some possible energy futures. Chapter 8, "Earth, Wind and Fire," covers how various renewable, less-polluting energy sources may supplant petroleum in the future. Chapter 9, "Autopia," covers the trials, tribulations and promise of electric cars. As is all of "Power Trip," these chapters are interesting, informative, detailed and factual--there's no shrillness, political ideology or arm-waving, just sober facts presented in a most readable and engaging manner.
In an ideal world, both tree-hugging libs and "drill, baby, drill" neocons would read "Power Trip." If they did, they would learn countless facts about petrochemicals and their environmental effects, and about the incredibly, staggeringly complicated issues, with no easy answers, that attend the world's addiction to oil. If they did, they would perhaps realize that the only rational, sane way forward is for both sides of the debate to accept that there are valid arguments on the other side, and that "all or nothing" solutions, on either side, are recipes for global disaster. If they did, they might even become more willing to listen to all viewpoints, and maybe even to consider compromises for their mutual benefit and for the future of the Earth. The answers are out there. "Power Trip" is required reading for anyone interested in finding out how we got to where we are and where we may go from here. I recommend it highly to every thoughtful, open-minded and concerned reader.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 14
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