The Birth of Energy

“Cara New Daggett's The Birth of Energy is a landmark work in the emergent field of energy humanities. In it, Daggett offers a brilliant genealogy of our modern conception of energy, explaining how Victorian empire, evolutionary theory, Presbyterianism, and thermodynamics helped to refashion the Aristotelian idea of energy as ‘dynamic virtue’ into a phenomenon having to do with the movement of matter and, above all, labor. Now facing a world warmed by burning fossil fuels, Daggett gives us a roadmap to thinking energy beyond the Protestant ethic of perpetual work.” — Dominic Boyer, author of Energopolitics: Wind and Power in the Anthropocene

“This complex, ambitious book represents a significant contribution to energy studies, offering an innovative history that situates the scientific discovery of energy within nineteenth-century cultures of imperialism, industrialization, and the governance of work. Cara New Daggett helps reframe the Anthropocene as the most recent realization of our profoundly misguided understanding of energy.” — Stephanie LeMenager, author of Living Oil: Petroleum Culture in the American Century

"The Birth of Energy is without doubt a landmark contribution to energy humanities and political theory, and one that greatly enriches and advances conceptual debates about energy and work in the Anthropocene." — James Palmer, Antipode

“The Birth of Energy is a major contribution to the environmental humanities that speaks to the notion of ‘political ecology’ in the most literal sense.”