>From the Publisher:
Internal Combustion is the compelling tale of corruption and manipulation that subjected the U.S. 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.
Edwin Black, 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.
He then brings the story full-circle to the present day oil crises, global warming and beyond. Black 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, and its interactive website will generate a much-needed national debate at a crucial time. It should be read 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.
Table of Contents
Chapter ----------------Page
>From The Critics
Publishers Weekly
Black (IBM and the Holocaust) spins the history of oil's ascendancy to
dominance over the global energy market into a sordid tale of conspiracy,
deception and murder. This enthralling book begins in the vast forests of
Cyprus, whose wood fueled the ancient Mediterranean, and extends through the
Elizabethan era, in which the Hostmen guild of Newcastle exerted political
influence by monopolizing the British coal supply. The central thread of
this well-researched book, which draws upon a vast array of archival sources
and an extensive list of secondary texts, picks up centuries later with the
competition in the American automotive market between electric power and
oil-fueled internal combustion. The definitive blow in favor of oil comes
with WWI, which prompted increased demand for gas-powered vehicles at the
very moment Thomas Edison and Henry Ford aborted plans to develop an
affordable electric car. The decades-long "General Motors conspiracy"
solidifies the demise of electrically powered mass transit in American
cities. Through it all, Black manages to keep this complex history
compelling. 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.