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.”

“The book is at its strongest when diagnosing the reverberations of the past in the current moment…. The Birth of Energy has much to offer to scholars engaged in questions of fossil fuels, imperialism, labor, and environmental politics.”

“Daggett’s The Birth of Energy is an impressive book, timely in our political and ecological climate and thorough in its systematic narration of energy in the Victorian period.... The book will appeal to a range of scholars, including those interested in the history of science, the energy humanities, global nineteenth-century studies, and post-colonial studies.” - Kameron Sanzo, Victorian Review

“The Birth of Energy is packed with fascinating details, and Daggett provides an impressive synthesis of a wide range of scholarship on energy.... Daggett argues for interrogating our received concepts and ways of knowing.” - Alyssa Battistoni, Perspectives on Politics