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April 04, 2006
Two Must-Read Books
Paul Robert's The End of Oil is the most balanced, best-written book I've yet found about the industry. Researched like a dissertation but written with both insight and a certain measure of wry wit, it provides a detailed, balanced and understandable history of energy (sounds boring--but trust me, it's not), review of the oil industry and a level-headed assessment of the realistic promise of each of the "savior technologies." More importantly, it's a clear gloss to the importance of peak oil--i.e., why you should care at all.
Though a bit more sentimental than Robert's tome, Louis Uchitelle's The Disposable American provides a similar context for the last century in employment, showing both how the covenant between workers and managers changed from the early 20th C. through the peak of employment stability (mid-century to about 1970) to today (which, in his view, isn't all that different from 1906) and--more importantly--makes a sound attack on the premise that re-education is a viable remedy for layoffs (or right-sizing).
Posted by davidkippen at April 4, 2006 11:19 AM