Historian of Energy, Tech, & Environment, Professor @SIUE, Author of ETHANOL: A HEMISPHERIC HISTORY, and TACONITE DREAMS, Public & Oral Historian
Edwardsville, Illinois
Joined March 2008
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It's publication day for ETHANOL: A HEMISPHERIC HISTORY FOR THE FUTURE OF BIOFUELS. Want to know why the US turns 40% of its corn crop into fuel? How the US and Brazil became the world's two largest ethanol producers? Tom Rogers and I have answers.
oupress.com/9780806196015/et…
If election postmortems end up showing that a significant number of young white men abandoned Trumpism, I hereby propose that pundits call these the "Zach Bryan Independents" from now on
Starting to run into students citing AI-slop ebooks in their research. Ugh. Another thing to add to the undergrad research methods class.
Talking with a colleague who studies Ukraine and has traveled widely in the past year-Ukraine, US, Europe-and they said the only place they now feel calm and focused is when in Ukraine. Not surprising but deeply ominous. War is a powerful SSRI.
Excellent review by McKibben. As he notes, the era of industrial giantism all started with the Mesabi Range.
In his photography, Edward Burtynsky “seems to be recording the sheer size” of twentieth-century industrial work, “an effort to simply chronicle what mankind at this moment was doing.” —@billmckibben go.nybooks.com/3UQ0AWw
Met a 14-year-old who is being "homeschooled" to run a "luxury sweatshirt company." A century of fighting to get kids out of garment piecework and textile mills, and we're undoing it in the name of "school choice."
Really appreciate this engaged (and positive!) review of _Ethanol_ by Francesco Gerali in the latest issue of Technology & Culture
muse.jhu.edu/article/1004358
"The authors present ethanol as a perennial alternative: a fuel that comes back when oil is scarce, when farm incomes sag, or when cleaner combustion rules take hold."
New chapter for an old industrial site: The former Alton Steel will become a data center in 2027. This site opened as Laclede Steel in 1911, a smaller, specialty mill. It was one of the mills that made steel for the WTC. Went bankrupt in the 2001 downturn
Coincidentally, I've been diving into steel history again and it's incredible how long the consequences of the 1970s energy crisis lasted. Much of the 1980s crisis among US integrated steelmakers was kicked off by the previous decade's high energy costs.
Thinking of my friends and colleagues in Alberta today as they vote on the separation referendum. Not my place to say how to vote, but I hope Alberta's future is guided by unity and sustainability, not grievance. (Here's my dog looking at the path ahead in Calgary.)
Saturday night in southwest Illinois. Art installation in an abandoned building, US Steel's Granite City Works in the background.
Some of the engineers at this refinery live in my neighborhood. I should offer a service to alert subscribers when I see them rushing out the door in coveralls, so you know prices are going up
One year since Tom Rogers and I published _Ethanol: A Hemispheric History for the Future of Biofuels_ with @OUPress. I've had some great conversations about energy and history since then, looking forward to more in the coming year.
Here's the link if you'd like to check it out for yourself! oupress.com/9780806196015/et…
When I saw that the H-Environment listserv needed a reviewer for a book on fishing in southern Illinois, I figured there can't be too many environmental historians in southern Illinois who also like fishing 😅 Here's the review. h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.ph…