Brian C. Black is associate professor in the departments of history and environmental studies at Pennsylvania State University, Altoona, PA. He is the author of the Greenwood's Nature and the Environment in Nineteenth-Century American Life (2006) and Nature and the Environment in Twentieth-Century American Life (2006). Richard Flarend is associate professor of physics at Pennsylvania State University, Altoona, PA.

• List of Tables and FiguresAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Conceiving of Alternative Energy1 Human Society's Need for Energy2 The Industrial Revolution and Humans' High-Energy Existence3 Against the American Grain: Paths Taken, Paths Declined4 The 1970s Initiate an Energy Transition5 Assessing Renewable and Alternative Energy Technologies6 Redefining AlternativesAppendix 1: Summaries of U.S. Legislation Provisions Related to Alternative EnergyAppendix 2: President Jimmy Carter's Speech Concerning Energy, April 18, 1977Appendix 3: President Jimmy Carter: The "Crisis of Confidence" Speech, July 15, 1979Appendix 4: Former Vice President Al Gore at New York University, July 17, 2008BibliographyIndex

"Alternative Energy joins others in the 'Historical Guides to Controversial issues in America' series, and is designed to provide students with report and debate arguments in a sourcebook covering the problems and promise of alternative fuels. It comes from an associate professor in history and environmental studies and it explores debates over alternative energy that have gathered force in this century." - Midwest Book Review