In the very first pages of her book, Before the Lights Go Out, Maggie Koerth-Baker blows my mind. Not in the sense of "Wow, I never knew that!" (although I certainly thought that throughout the book), but more like "Wow, I never thought of it that way!" I’m referring to the revelation that the reasons for pursuing alternative energy don’t have to be focused on climate change. Instead, many Americans care more about energy security, conservation, or simple nationalism. This sets the tone for the whole book: let’s skip the reasons and just focus on the solutions and hard choices that need to be made.

Hard choices, indeed. This isn’t a book proclaiming that the hydrogen economy or nuclear fusion or something else (pick your dream energy source/carrier) will save us all. Koerth-Baker is optimistic, but realistic: we can do this, but there aren’t any easy solutions, and it’s probably going to be expensive. This isn’t about driving a hybrid or changing your lightbulbs—not that those aren’t good things to do—but rather, as she puts it, "about the inconvenient complications, unforeseen side effects, and less-than-perfect solutions."

The book is a fast and easy read (in the good sense). If you're familiar with Koerth-Baker’s work as the science editor at BoingBoing, you know that she does a great job breaking down complicated concepts while keeping them interesting. This carries over to the book, and it reads almost like a long-form blog post, which is a good thing. Instead of links, every chapter holds a Neal-Stephenson-esque level of footnotes—52 pages of them (compared to just over 200 pages of primary content).

As the title subtly suggests, this book focuses mostly on electricity, rather than transportation fuels or other energy sectors. This isn’t because those other areas aren’t interesting, but simply because electrical generation makes up the biggest single portion of energy use and emissions.

Starting with the first stumbling attempts at electricity generation and the electrical grid in New York and Appleton, Wisconsin, in 1882, Koerth-Baker explains how we got here, and what "here" is: an electrical grid with waste and inefficiencies at both the generation and consumption ends, one that requires constant monitoring to make sure there isn’t too much or too little electricity running through our wires.

The grid is sort of like the Matrix: all around us, affecting everything we do without us usually noticing, and only a few people really understand it. Unlike the Matrix, however, which was created by advanced artificial intelligences, the grid has come together piece-by-piece over the last 100+ years. (Things would probably by easier if it had been the former, though.) Koerth-Baker does a great job demystifying the grid, as well as explaining the difficulties in bringing large amounts of electrical power from renewables to our current grid.

To explain all these things, she takes us across the United States, meeting people like the owner of an extremely energy-efficient home in Urbana, Illinois—so efficient, in fact, that it can be heated by a single candle in the fall—and the director of a electrical grid control center in Houston, Texas. We also travel to the farm town of Medelia, Minnesota, where the leader of a local nonprofit is trying to improve soil and water quality by getting farmers to grow crops other than corn and soy—crops that can be converted to biofuels to sell locally. These experiences drive home the message that we can start making energy changes now, rather than waiting on some miracle solution.

There are a couple minor issues I must bring up, even if I’m nitpicking. For one, Koerth-Baker insists that the metric prefix "giga" (as in "gigawatt," one billion watts) is pronounced with a soft 'g,' as in "jigawatt." Apparently, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (back when it was just the National Bureau of Standards) formalized this version, but I’ve never heard it said this way in practice, Back to the Future notwithstanding. Like I said, nitpicking (and I’m only half serious).

I do have one slightly more substantive criticism, although it is still minor. When talking about biofuel made from grass, she says that researchers are working on making it compatible with cars. However, this sentence encapsulates a big problem that the engine and combustion community is dealing with right now. Without getting into this issue too deeply, the problem is solvable, but there is a good amount of work needed to both understand the properties of the biofuels and to redesign existing engines (or new engines altogether) that can run on varying fuels.

In all, this is a great book, and one I recommend that pretty much everyone should read. We interact with electricity and energy every day, even if it has become invisible. Energy change is going to happen, and the change might be easier if we all understand the issues and decisions that need to be made.

Before the Lights Go Out: Conquering the Energy Crisis before It Conquers Us by Maggie Koerth-Baker. 2012, Wiley.