The author tells Skelly’s story well, presenting him as an enterprising and resourceful trailblazer.
A profile of an ambitious and persistent entrepreneur and a revealing look at the complex issues involved in the process of transitioning to renewable energy sources.
Gold (The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World, 2014), a Gerald Loeb Award–winning reporter for the Wall Street Journal, chronicles the efforts of Michael Skelly, an infrastructure builder, to create an interstate transmission superhighway to bring direct high-voltage electrical power from the balkanized world of solar and wind farms to cities thousands of miles away. Unlike many present-day journalists, the author keeps himself mostly out of the story, with Skelly and his colleagues and adversaries front and center. Before getting into the story of Clean Line Energy, Skelly’s company, Gold shows him working in the late-1990s for a tiny, aggressive company in the rapidly growing wind industry in Houston, developing wind farms. In 2007, when the firm had become a major wind power producer and was bought and remodeled by Goldman Sachs, Skelly quit the wind business and ran for Congress. As a Democrat in a heavily Republican district, he lost. “From despondency comes inspiration,” according to Skelly, and it was then that he conceived of Clean Line Energy. The long process of trying to turn his concept into a reality is the subject of the second half of the book. The narrative is sometimes mazelike, full of sharply depicted players, corporate strategies, funding problems, struggles against long-existing utilities determined not to lose control of the grid, politicians and their personal preferences, misconceptions by lawmakers, the parochial interests of individual states, court cases, outdated statutes, and confused or fearful citizens. Ultimately, despite the complexity, Gold shows clearly the myriad daunting problems facing an entrepreneur in the renewable energy business.
The author tells Skelly’s story well, presenting him as an enterprising and resourceful trailblazer.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6358-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
An intriguing meditation on the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it that should appeal to both...
Italian theoretical physicist Rovelli (General Relativity: The Most Beautiful of Theories, 2015, etc.) shares his thoughts on the broader scientific and philosophical implications of the great revolution that has taken place over the past century.
These seven lessons, which first appeared as articles in the Sunday supplement of the Italian newspaper Sole 24 Ore, are addressed to readers with little knowledge of physics. In less than 100 pages, the author, who teaches physics in both France and the United States, cogently covers the great accomplishments of the past and the open questions still baffling physicists today. In the first lesson, he focuses on Einstein's theory of general relativity. He describes Einstein's recognition that gravity "is not diffused through space [but] is that space itself" as "a stroke of pure genius." In the second lesson, Rovelli deals with the puzzling features of quantum physics that challenge our picture of reality. In the remaining sections, the author introduces the constant fluctuations of atoms, the granular nature of space, and more. "It is hardly surprising that there are more things in heaven and earth, dear reader, than have been dreamed of in our philosophy—or in our physics,” he writes. Rovelli also discusses the issues raised in loop quantum gravity, a theory that he co-developed. These issues lead to his extraordinary claim that the passage of time is not fundamental but rather derived from the granular nature of space. The author suggests that there have been two separate pathways throughout human history: mythology and the accumulation of knowledge through observation. He believes that scientists today share the same curiosity about nature exhibited by early man.
An intriguing meditation on the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it that should appeal to both scientists and general readers.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-18441-3
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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