Synopses & Reviews
Edwin Black, the award-winning author of
IBM and the Holocaust, has mined scores of corporate and governmental archives to assemble thousands of previously uncovered and long-forgotten documents and studies into this dramatic story. Black traces a continuum of rapacious energy cartels and special interests dating back nearly 5,000 years, from wood to coal to oil, and then to the bicycle and electric battery cartels of the 1890s, which created thousands of electric vehicles that plied American streets a century ago. But those noiseless and clean cars were scuttled by petroleum interests, despite the little-known efforts of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford to mass-produce electric cars powered by personal backyard energy stations. Black also documents how General Motors criminally conspired to undermine mass transit in dozens of cities and how Big Oil, Big Corn, and Big Coal have subverted synthetic fuels and other alternatives.
Black then brings the story full-circle to the present-day oil crises, global warming, and beyond. He showcases overlooked compressed-gas, electric, and hydrogen cars on the market today, as well as inexpensive all-function home energy units that could eliminate much oil usage. His eye-opening call for a Manhattan Project for immediate energy independence will help energize society to finally take action.
Internal Combustion, along with its interactive Web site www.internalcombustionbook.com, will generate a much-needed national debate at a crucial time. It should be heard by every citizen who consumes oil—everyone. Internal Combustion can change everything not by reinventing the wheel but by excavating it from where it was buried a century ago.
Review
"By the time the author makes his final, impassioned plea for a bold new solution to the world's energy crisis, he has already made his case with devastating clarity." ---Publishers Weekly Starred Review
Synopsis
Internal Combustion is the compelling tale of corruption and manipulation that subjected the United States and the world to an oil addiction that could have been avoided, that was never necessary, and that could be ended not in ten years, not in five years, but today.
Synopsis
Internal Combustion is the compelling tale of corruption and manipulation that subjected the United States and the world to an oil addiction that could have been avoided, that was never necessary, and that could be ended not in ten years, not in five years, but today.
About the Author
Edwin Black is the award-winning New York Times bestselling author of IBM and the Holocaust, The Transfer Agreement, and War Against the Weak. His articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Newsday, the Village Voice, the Sunday Times (of London), and the Los Angeles Times, as well as in leading magazines such as the American Bar Association Journal, American Lawyer, and Der Spiegel (Germany). Black has won numerous awards for distinguished journalism, including the Carl Sandburg Award, three Rockower Awards, and two awards from the American Society of Journalists and Authors. Stephen Hoye has won thirteen AudioFile Earphones Awards and two prestigious APA Audie Awards, including one for the New York Times bestseller Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki. A graduate of London's Guildhall and a veteran of London's West End, Stephen has recorded many other notable titles, such as Every Second Counts by Lance Armstrong and The Google Story by David A. Vise and Mark Malseed.