Enlightening reading for anyone interested in the politics and economics of energy.
Choice
Exciting to read. It is the product of someone who is such a gifted writer.
New Books Network
Peter Shulman's excellent new book mines the pre-history of the relationship between ideas about energy extraction and the building of the United States as an imperial nation.
Explorations in Federal History
A major contribution to foreign policy history and an essential read for any scholar interested in the development of policy and technology during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
H-Net Reviews
In his exhaustively researched book, Shulman convincingly argues for the centrality of coal to nineteenth-century American domestic and foreign policy. His fast paced and wide-ranging work recounts a number of fascinating episodes central to nineteenth-century American history through the lens of energy needs.
Diplomatic History
[Shulman's] rich text provides a vital contribution to our understanding of how resource exploitation-and hence science and technological change-was woven into the history of economics, international affairs, and domestic politics.
Journal of American History
Coal and Empire offers an intellectual feast for both historians and modern energy scholars. Meticulously researched and expertly written, it attempts to show how an energy fuel, in this instance coal, became an integral part of United States national security in the nineteenth century.
Technology and Culture
A forceful book-well-written, eye-opening, and analytically sharp. Coal and Empire is essential reading for anyone interested in the deep roots of the modern fossil economy.
American Historical Review
Regardless of where you stand on the nineteenth-century US imperial question, the resources, technology, and politics behind expanding US interests have long needed the careful treatment Coal and Empire provides.
Historical Geography
The book is an important one, and the histories of more quotidian commodities need more attention more generally. By using coal as a lens Shulman shows its integral place across US history and the development of its global role into the twentieth century.
Mariner's Mirror
Innovative and important analyses of the specific role of engineers and technology in provoking changes in energy policies, and thus international relations... by delivering a detailed and accurate historical reconstruction of energy in nineteenth-century America, the book provides an interesting comparative case to present narratives about oil and energy security in the contemporary United States.
AMBIX
Factpacked book of vital information.
M.G. Paregian
Coal and Empire apporte ainsi une reflexion de long terme conduisant jusqu'aux rivages du temps present. Ce n'est pas l'un des moindres attraits de ce livre stimulant.
Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales [English edition]
While the book is an excellent stand-alone study of the American adoption of coal for naval, mercantile, and imperial gains, it also is a fascinating addition to the growing field of energy history. Readers searching for an in-depth examination of naval and government policy will find what they seek, but so too will those interested in broader American, environmental, and energy histories.
Canadian Journal of History