Most Americans consider electricity essential to their lives, but the historic disparity of its distribution and use challenges notions of a democratic lifestyl

How electric light created new spaces that transformed the built environment and the perception of modern architecture. In this book, Sandy Isenstadt examines e

The significance of "technology" has been subject of continuous discussion. This selection of readings, ranging from primary sources to scholarly and critical w

Nye uses energy as a touchstone to examine the lives of ordinary people engaged in normal activities. How did the United States become the world's largest consu

Tells the history of the Bureau of Reclamation's hydropower program in the Western United States.

How aluminum enabled a high-speed, gravity-defying American modernity even as other parts of the world paid the price in environmental damage and political turm

A historical study of how increased access to ice—decades before refrigeration—transformed American life. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen