This is something quite extraordinary.

A sprawling, epic story covering energy and its effects on policy, with characters and topics and events from the beginning of the industrial revolution to the death of Osama and the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Covers oil, the petrostate, war, electricity, the computer age, climate change, the new carbon economy, renewable energy, and what is to be done in the future. And all this in a very lucid and readable style.

I would go so far as to say that the search for energy is going to be one of the defining crises of the 21st century and beyond, and this book will equip you to understand a glimpse of this incredibly complex issue.