Power Trip

In this fresh and gutsy analysis, Amanda Little lays bare the past, present and future of America's energy, showing how the innovative designs that got it to its current energy crisis will actually save it from ruin. In this smart, fluent and easy-to-read narrative, Little delivers a confident and constructive narrative that promises to move America, (and therefore the rest of the world) beyond the despair, doom and gloom that has been plaguing our news stories and the media. Little takes us on a trip through the past, present and future of our energy landscape, demonstrating how America's energy consumption first began. Every step of it's astronomical rise is set out -- from Thomas Edison's light bulb discovery in the early 1800s to Roosevelt's Faustian deal with Ibn Saud, turning oil from a commodity into the single most powerful political, military and economic catalyst of the world. As she reveals the staggering facts, oil's gargantuan influence on our everyday lives becomes clear. Without it we are nothing, and yet somehow we have allowed it to instruct every facet of our existence.
With authority and an extensive breadth of knowledge, and using examples of the greatest energy users in the world, Little turns many of the old and tired outlooks for the future of sustainability on their heads. Never before has America been so capable or so in need of change. An energetic and fresh polemic that inspires and fascinates in equal measure; "Power Trip" does for energy what "Fast Food Nation" did for nutritional health, changing forever the way we think and feel about our energy and its future.