An interesting book. Too bad there's not much in here about utility deregulation.

The book is an angry diatribe against various causes that the author hates, including, among others, robber barons, big corporations, corrupt politicians, nuclear power, materialism, the Vietnam War, turncoat environmentalists, and the utility industry. Rather than address these topics in turn, the author attacks each of them in every chapter of the book. The use of various colorful adjectives to describe these evils does little to dull the monotony.

These points might be tolerable if the book actually lived up to its title, but utility deregulation is treated only in the last two chapters, and in a very limited fashion at that. The first of these consists of ten pages about the California deregulation debacle, which even deregulation proponents agree was a terrible mess. The second is a brave statement about how the bad guys won't win, with little explanation for why not.

The book has little in the way of data or supporting evidence for its contentions, particularly with respect to deregulation. We are told the exact number of demonstrators dragged off the site of a protest at a nuclear power plant (1,414), but we are never told the numbers which might show that deregulation will raise the cost to consumers, though we are told that detailed studies have been done demonstrating just this.

The author also does little to present an alternative plan, being far more interested in attacking his opponents. The chapter on solar and wind energy is almost an afterthought, and energy efficiency gets perhaps a paragraph. There is nothing on how a plan using alternative energy systems might be implemented. In contrast, two chapters are dedicated to attacking nuclear power.

In the end, this book is an interesting propaganda pamphlet, but will do little to inform the public about the pros and cons of utility deregulation.

The author does a good job explaining how the deregulation has allowed the utilities to push the cost of their investment decisions on to their customers and taxpayers. Read it with an open mind and take it as one opinion in the deregulation debate.

I read Harvey's book when it first came out. I'm not an expert on this subject, but the issues he raised in a highly accessable style worried me, although no one was talking about them at the time. Now, they're front page headlines. We think these decisions just happen, then discover when we read a book like this, that they're product of huge political interests, and that we, the ordinary citizens, pay the toll.

A wonderful rallying cry for a more democratic approach to key energy issues.

Paul Loeb Author Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time [www.soulofacitizen.org]