How one solar power plant might chart a sustainable path forward for enlisting American capitalism in the fight against climate change.

How one solar power plant might chart a sustainable path forward for enlisting American capitalism in the fight against climate change.

Contextualizes and analyzes the key energy transitions in U.S. history and the central importance of energy production and consumption on the American environment and in American culture and politics. Focusing on the major energy transitions in U.S. history, from the pre-industrial era to the present day, this two-volume encyclopedia captures the major advancements, events, technologies, and people synonymous with the production and consumption of energy in the United States. Expert contributors show how, for example, the introduction of electricity and petroleum into ordinary American life facilitated periods of rapid social and political change, as well as profound and ongoing impacts on the environment. These developments have in many ways defined and accelerated the pace of modern life and led to vast improvements in living conditions for millions of people, just as they have also brought new fears of resource exhaustion and fossil-fuel induced climate change. Today, as America begins to move beyond the use of fossil fuels toward a greater reliance on renewables, including wind and solar energy, there is a pressing need to understand energy in America's past in order to better understand its energy future.

How Americans can take action in their own communities and unite across the political spectrum in pursuit of solutions to climate change. Andreas Karelas has a message we don’t often hear: we have all the tools we need to solve the climate crisis and doing so will improve our lives, our economy, and our society. But to engage people in the climate fight, we need stories that are empowering, inclusive, and solutions-oriented, not based in fear. Karelas digs into the latest data on the rapidly falling costs and increased efficiencies of clean energy technologies compared to fossil fuels, looks at the rate of job creation in the clean energy sector, and introduces the reader to the inspiring work of climate heroes on both sides of the aisle—from Republican mayors and governors to activists, from businesses to faith communities. Climate Courage shows us how we can move past our collective inaction on climate change and work together in our communities to create a more sustainable, just, clean energy–powered economy that works for everyone.

In ''The Irresponsible Pursuit of Paradise, '' Dr. Jim L. Bowyer clearly documents an ethically bankrupt position that underlies much of our environmental policy. High consumption in wealthy countries usually goes hand-in-hand with resistance to domestic raw materials extraction and half-hearted interest in recycling. Because of this, the world's wealthiest countries increasingly rely on imported raw materials from poorer nations to fuel consumption. This, in turn, allows citizens of wealthy countries to smugly enjoy high levels of consumption with minimal exposure to the environmental impacts of that consumption. Bowyer concludes, ''Contrary to common practice today, high consuming nations need to be asking, 'Why not in my back yard?'''

From Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis, authors of the PEN Center USA award-winning Dallas 1963, comes a madcap narrative about Timothy Leary's daring prison escape and run from the law. On the moonlit evening of September 12, 1970, an ex-Harvard professor with a genius I.Q. studies a twelve-foot high fence topped with barbed wire. A few months earlier, Dr. Timothy Leary, the High Priest of LSD, had been running a gleeful campaign for California governor against Ronald Reagan. Now, Leary is six months into a ten-year prison sentence for the crime of possessing two marijuana cigarettes. Aided by the radical Weather Underground, Leary's escape from prison is the counterculture's union of "dope and dynamite," aimed at sparking a revolution and overthrowing the government. Inside the Oval Office, President Richard Nixon drinks his way through sleepless nights as he expands the war in Vietnam and plots to unleash the United States government against his ever-expanding list of domestic enemies. Antiwar demonstrators are massing by the tens of thousands; homemade bombs are exploding everywhere; Black Panther leaders are threatening to burn down the White House; and all the while Nixon obsesses over tracking down Timothy Leary, whom he has branded "the most dangerous man in America." Based on freshly uncovered primary sources and new firsthand interviews, The Most Dangerous Man in America is an American thriller that takes readers along for the gonzo ride of a lifetime. Spanning twenty-eight months, President Nixon's careening, global manhunt for Dr. Timothy Leary winds its way among homegrown radicals, European aristocrats, a Black Panther outpost in Algeria, an international arms dealer, hash-smuggling hippies from the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, and secret agents on four continents, culminating in one of the trippiest journeys through the American counterculture.