Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"From the first we realize Fuel is not a traditional academic essay, but a fantastic dictionary, full of tall tales, craziness, real history, fake history, anticipations of the future, segues from one fuel form or fantasy to another, and sheer nonsense tied to hard truths. In this sense it's like fuel—there at the beginning and still with us, kicking and screaming, to the bitter end."—Allan Stoekl, Pennsylvania State University
"With a nod to dictionary mania of Jules Verne, Fuel maps what starts as the common law right to a small bundle of wood but becomes an ever more dangerous dream of the power of pure fuel-less energy. Air, amber, bitumen . . . coal, cobalt, coke . . . Pinkus brilliantly punctures this gaseous utopian fantasy of an immaterial fuel and gestures toward a present less addicted to future fuels."—Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Columbia University
"Pinkus totes a toolbox packed with allegory and alchemy, theories and thinkers with which to prod her materials. The fuels catalogued range from the (seemingly) obvious – wood, coal, oil, uranium – through the more fictional-imaginative – the philosopher’s stone, dilithium crystals – to the (seemingly) absurd – albatrosses, goats, the arrow of Eros, patriotism."—New Scientist
"An illuminating read for those engaging in interdisciplinary work on the concerns of climate change."—CHOICE
"A heroic effort to remind us that sustainability is often an illusion caused by our human-sized view of the world."—The Manchester Review of Books
"Inventive and engaging."—Los Angeles Review of Books
"Pinkus’s innovative and eccentric book proves to be the perfect gateway to analyze underrepresented perspectives of the energy world, destabilizing existing narratives about fuels." —PoLAR
Table of ContentsContents
Acknowledgments
Fuel: A Speculative Dictionary
Notes
Bibliography
