Energy and Empire

Energy and Empire PDF Author: Crosbie Smith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521261739
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 906

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Book Description
This study of Lord Kelvin, the most famous mathematical physicist of 19th-century Britain, delivers on a speculation long entertained by historians of science that Victorian physics expressed in its very content the industrial society that produced it.

Energy and Empire

Energy and Empire PDF Author: Crosbie Smith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521261739
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 906

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Book Description
This study of Lord Kelvin, the most famous mathematical physicist of 19th-century Britain, delivers on a speculation long entertained by historians of science that Victorian physics expressed in its very content the industrial society that produced it.

Coal and Empire

Coal and Empire PDF Author: Peter A. Shulman
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421417073
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
The fascinating history of how coal-based energy became entangled with American security. Since the early twentieth century, Americans have associated oil with national security. From World War I to American involvement in the Middle East, this connection has seemed a self-evident truth. But, as Peter A. Shulman argues, Americans had to learn to think about the geopolitics of energy in terms of security, and they did so beginning in the nineteenth century: the age of coal. Coal and Empire insightfully weaves together pivotal moments in the history of science and technology by linking coal and steam to the realms of foreign relations, navy logistics, and American politics. Long before oil, coal allowed Americans to rethink the place of the United States in the world. Shulman explores how the development of coal-fired oceangoing steam power in the 1840s created new questions, opportunities, and problems for U.S. foreign relations and naval strategy. The search for coal, for example, helped take Commodore Matthew Perry to Japan in the 1850s. It facilitated Abraham Lincoln's pursuit of black colonization in 1860s Panama. After the Civil War, it led Americans to debate whether a need for coaling stations required the construction of a global empire. Until 1898, however, Americans preferred to answer the questions posed by coal with new technologies rather than new territories. Afterward, the establishment of America's string of island outposts created an entirely different demand for coal to secure the country's new colonial borders, a process that paved the way for how Americans incorporated oil into their strategic thought. By exploring how the security dimensions of energy were not intrinsically linked to a particular source of power but rather to political choices about America's role in the world, Shulman ultimately suggests that contemporary global struggles over energy will never disappear, even if oil is someday displaced by alternative sources of power.

Energy and Empire

Energy and Empire PDF Author: George A. Gonzalez
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438442955
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
What set the United States on the path to developing commercial nuclear energy in the 1950s, and what led to the seeming demise of that industry in the late 1970s? Why, in spite of the depletion of fossil fuels and the obvious dangers of global warming, has the United States moved so slowly toward adopting alternatives? In Energy and Empire, George A. Gonzalez presents a clear and concise argument demonstrating that economic elites tied their advocacy of the nuclear energy option to post-1945 American foreign policy goals. At the same time, these elites opposed government support for other forms of energy, such as solar, that cannot be dominated by one nation. While researchers have blamed safety concerns and other factors as helping to arrest the expansion of domestic nuclear power plant construction, Gonzalez points to an entirely different set of motivations stemming from the loss of America’s domination/control of the enrichment of nuclear fuel. Once foreign countries could enrich their own fuel, civilian nuclear power ceased to be a lever the United States could use to economically/politically dominate other nations. Instead, it became a major concern relating to nuclear weapons proliferation.

Energy and Civilization

Energy and Civilization PDF Author: Vaclav Smil
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262536161
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 564

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Book Description
A comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society throughout history, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. "I wait for new Smil books the way some people wait for the next 'Star Wars' movie. In his latest book, Energy and Civilization: A History, he goes deep and broad to explain how innovations in humans' ability to turn energy into heat, light, and motion have been a driving force behind our cultural and economic progress over the past 10,000 years. —Bill Gates, Gates Notes, Best Books of the Year Energy is the only universal currency; it is necessary for getting anything done. The conversion of energy on Earth ranges from terra-forming forces of plate tectonics to cumulative erosive effects of raindrops. Life on Earth depends on the photosynthetic conversion of solar energy into plant biomass. Humans have come to rely on many more energy flows—ranging from fossil fuels to photovoltaic generation of electricity—for their civilized existence. In this monumental history, Vaclav Smil provides a comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. Humans are the only species that can systematically harness energies outside their bodies, using the power of their intellect and an enormous variety of artifacts—from the simplest tools to internal combustion engines and nuclear reactors. The epochal transition to fossil fuels affected everything: agriculture, industry, transportation, weapons, communication, economics, urbanization, quality of life, politics, and the environment. Smil describes humanity's energy eras in panoramic and interdisciplinary fashion, offering readers a magisterial overview. This book is an extensively updated and expanded version of Smil's Energy in World History (1994). Smil has incorporated an enormous amount of new material, reflecting the dramatic developments in energy studies over the last two decades and his own research over that time.

Powering Empire

Powering Empire PDF Author: On Barak
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520973933
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
The Age of Empire was driven by coal, and the Middle East—as an idea—was made by coal. Coal’s imperial infrastructure presaged the geopolitics of oil that wreaks carnage today, as carbonization threatens our very climate. Powering Empire argues that we cannot promote worldwide decarbonization without first understanding the history of the globalization of carbon energy. How did this black rock come to have such long-lasting power over the world economy? Focusing on the flow of British carbon energy to the Middle East, On Barak excavates the historic nexus between coal and empire to reveal the political and military motives behind what is conventionally seen as a technological innovation. He provocatively recounts the carbon-intensive entanglements of Western and non-Western powers and reveals unfamiliar resources—such as Islamic risk-aversion and Gandhian vegetarianism—for a climate justice that relies on more diverse and ethical solutions worldwide.

King Energy

King Energy PDF Author: Bruce Raphael
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 059500427X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 730

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Book Description
The modern energy industry grew out of the rubble of the Middle Ages and the American Civil War. It quickly grew into a bewildering assemblage not only of mines, fields, pipelines, utilities and their overlapping directorates but of public and private policies and intrigues throughout the world, one broad enough in scale to rival the most powerful democracies in determining the ultimate fates of nations. Its priorities set the stage for the Cold War and the nuclear arms race. If the industrys rise to power was unexpected by the traditional establishments of nation and state, its crash was equally breathtaking, involving actors and players in unexpected locales and venues, from backyard inventors to the concrete canyons of Wall Street. King Energy is the story of the companies and personalities that defined the 20th Century and set the stage for the economic, political and social agendas leading up to the new millennium.

Private Empire

Private Empire PDF Author: Steve Coll
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101572140
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 654

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Book Description
“ExxonMobil has met its match in Coll, an elegant writer and dogged reporter . . . extraordinary . . . monumental.” —The Washington Post “Fascinating . . . Private Empire is a book meticulously prepared as if for trial . . . a compelling and elucidatory work.” —Bloomberg From the Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling author of Ghost Wars and The Achilles Trap, an extraordinary exposé of Big Oil. Includes a profile of current Secretary of State and former chairman and chief executive of ExxonMobil, Rex Tillerson In this, the first hard-hitting examination of ExxonMobil—the largest and most powerful private corporation in the United States—Steve Coll reveals the true extent of its power. Private Empire pulls back the curtain, tracking the corporation’s recent history and its central role on the world stage, beginning with the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989 and leading to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The action spans the globe—featuring kidnapping cases, civil wars, and high-stakes struggles at the Kremlin—and the narrative is driven by larger-than-life characters, including corporate legend Lee “Iron Ass” Raymond, ExxonMobil’s chief executive until 2005, and current chairman and chief executive Rex Tillerson, President-elect Donald Trump's nomination for Secretary of State. A penetrating, news-breaking study, Private Empire is a defining portrait of Big Oil in American politics and foreign policy.

Energy Empire

Energy Empire PDF Author: Fiona Hill
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781903558386
Category : Gas industry
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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Book Description


Ghosts of Empire

Ghosts of Empire PDF Author: Kwasi Kwarteng
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610391217
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 590

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Book Description
Kwasi Kwarteng is the child of parents whose lives were shaped as subjects of the British Empire, first in their native Ghana, then as British immigrants. He brings a unique perspective and impeccable academic credentials to a narrative history of the British Empire, one that avoids sweeping judgmental condemnation and instead sees the Empire for what it was: a series of local fiefdoms administered in varying degrees of competence or brutality by a cast of characters as outsized and eccentric as anything conjured by Gilbert and Sullivan. The truth, as Kwarteng reveals, is that there was no such thing as a model for imperial administration; instead, appointees were schooled in quirky, independent-minded individuality. As a result the Empire was the product not of a grand idea but of often chaotic individual improvisation. The idiosyncrasies of viceroys and soldier-diplomats who ran the colonial enterprise continues to impact the world, from Kashmir to Sudan, Baghdad to Hong Kong.

Empire, State & Building

Empire, State & Building PDF Author: Kiel Moe
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781940291840
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
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