The Last Energy War: The Battle over Utility Deregulation

The Last Energy War puts into unique historic perspective the theft of more than $200-billion perpetrated through electric power deregulation to bail out more than 100 failed American commercial reactors.

A fast-paced, shoot-from-the-hip "people's history," The Last Energy War is an accessible, entertaining, and infuriating narration of how the electric power business started, how it almost bankrupted the nation, and how it is now soaking the public to pay for its trillion-dollar atomic mistake. From the electric chair to Chernobyl, from Thomas Edison to Cleveland's "boy mayor" Dennis Kucinich, Harvey Wasserman's fascinating little book shows how the mega-utilities squashed solar power, how a military-utility alliance helped force atomic reactors down the public throat without a vote, and how a score of bought state legislatures have already handed corrupt utilities $200 billion in pure pork through a bogus deregulatory process. Merciless in its Robber Baron critique, The Last Energy War builds on American heroes such as Franklin Roosevelt and George Norris to offer a blueprint for how we can take back our power supply.

Relentlessly optimistic, it is the one book you must read to understand what's really happening to you when you turn on your lights—and then get the bill.

HARVEY WASSERMAN has been called "perhaps the best known reporter on nuclear topics" (by the S.F. Review of Books). New Age Journal says "Harvey Wasserman has staked a valid claim to the long-unfulfilled position of historian for a new, emerging generation." Author of Harvey Wasserman’s History of the United States, among other books and innumerable articles and essays, he has been writing, speaking, and organizing worldwide on energy issues since 1973.