Powering the dream : the history and promise of green technology

 by Alexis Madrigal. Technology journalist Madrigal rises above politics to review the surprisingly long and fruitful history of renewable energy in the U.S. From the water-powered turbines of the Lowell factories to windmills dotting the Great Plains in the mid-nineteenth century, he makes it clear that Americans were eager to utilize green power from the earliest days of industrialization. Readers will likely be startled by hopeful early-twentieth-century declarations that Pacific Ocean wave motors would render Los Angeles a smokeless and sootless city. While the motors were a failure at the time, the enthusiasm for their success is echoed in the current use of tidal power. From modern-day transcendentalists to suburban solar homes of the Ozzie-and-Harriet era, Madrigal disproves any notion that an energy-conscious attitude is a twenty-first-century invention. Rather, it is one that has been as much a part of our national fabric as the frontier ideal itself. He shows beyond a doubt that the past will lead the way to a greener future, one that nods to Thoreau while embracing the tools to finally make green technology a real success. --Booklist (Check Catalog)