Consuming Power: A Social History of American Energies

by David E. Nye

Overview

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 consumer of energy? David Nye shows that this is less a question about the development of technology than it is a question about the development of culture. In Consuming Power, Nye uses energy as a touchstone to examine the lives of ordinary people engaged in normal activities. He looks at how these activities changed as new energy systems were constructed, from colonial times to recent years. He also shows how, as Americans incorporated new machines and processes into their lives, they became ensnared in power systems that were not easily changed: they made choices about the conduct of their lives, and those choices accumulated to produce a consuming culture. Nye examines a sequence of large systems that acquired and then lost technological momentum over the course of American history, including water power, steam power, electricity, the internal-combustion engine, atomic power, and computerization. He shows how each system became part of a larger set of social constructions through its links to the home, the factory, and the city. The result is a social history of America as seen through the lens of energy consumption.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262640381
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	02/18/1999
Series:	The MIT Press
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.69(d)
Lexile:	1470L (what's this?)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

David E. Nye is Senior Research Fellow at the Charles Babbage Institute and the History of Science and Technology program at the University of Minnesota and Professor Emeritus of American Studies at the University of Southern Denmark. His other books published by the MIT Press include Electrifying America and American Technological Sublime. He was awarded the Leonardo da Vinci Medal in 2005 and was knighted by the Queen of Denmark in 2013.

What People are Saying About This

Jeffrey L. Meikle

This survey is compellingly written, making intelligent use of entertaining anecdotes, apt but unfamiliar quotations, and concrete details of everyday life—all in the service of innovative general arguments.

Endorsement

This survey is compellingly written, making intelligent use of entertaining anecdotes, apt but unfamiliar quotations, and concrete details of everyday life—all in the service of innovative general arguments.

—Jeffrey L. Meikle, Director, American Studies Program, University of Texas at Austin; author of American Plastic: A Cultural History

From the Publisher

This survey is compellingly written, making intelligent use of entertaining anecdotes, apt but unfamiliar quotations, and concrete details of everyday life—all in the service of innovative general arguments.

—Jeffrey L. Meikle, Director, American Studies Program, University of Texas at Austin; author of American Plastic: A Cultural History

Editorial Reviews

Despite the double-entendre in its title, this work focuses less on the history of America's consumption of energy than on its sheer consumption, conspicuous and incorrigible. Nye (American studies, Odense Univ., Denmark; American Technological Sublime, LJ 11/1/94) attempts to examine how the development of energy systems within America's unique culture, within a complex set of social constructions, caused the United States to become the "greatest power-consuming nation in history." His rambling and tentative work moves awkwardly from the painfully mundane, such as the type of shoes people wore, to the painfully abstruse: "Possessing a new way to move through the world creates tacit dynamic and perceptual knowledge, thus expanding the potential for experience." Lacking serious discussion of BTUs and horsepower, it is largely a hodgepodge of technology, commerce, and labor, a better treatment of which can be found in any standard history text. Not recommended.Robert C. Ballou, Atlanta

Library Journal