In August 2003, the lights went out across North America, from Michigan and Ohio and Canada's largest province of Ontario to New York and New Jersey. No one has ever been held accountable for this billion-dollar catastrophe.

In Blackout, Gordon L. Weil tells the story of how Thomas Edison's secretary began a vast national industry, how Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal tried to rein it in, and how this market dominated by a few large companies has profited from deregulation, with no benefits to consumers. He also explains the origins of the Enron scandal, as well as recounting how the famous blackout of 2003 could have been avoided: if only a few trees had been trimmed.

"With this ambitious book, Weil sets two complementary tasks for himself: to reveal many of the problems that have been hidden from the public about the electric industry, and to suggest redress. His sprawling, sometimes convoluted history begins with Thomas Edison's invention of the lightbulb and former Edison employee Samuel Insull's definitive approach to the business of electricity, which he refined while running the Commonwealth Electric Company in Chicago. Weil then covers the following century, leading up to the 2003 blackout and its aftermath, with a brevity that's alternately refreshing and frustrating. His distillation of the cause of that blackout as 'a series of failures and inefficiencies' is typical for its clarity, but when the author takes on more complicated topics, like the California energy crisis, his writing loses some of its accessibility. Small glossaries and inserts provide welcome background for the lay reader, but Weil's difficult subject and expertise in the field — he has worked as a power broker and energy consultant and advised the U.S. Department of Energy — are sometimes at odds with this generalized approach. However, his final recommendations, which are largely aimed at restoring knowledge and power to the consumer, are authoritative and persuasive. (July)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)