An authoritative history of the energy crises of the 1970s and the world they wrought In 1973, the Arab OPEC cartel banned the export of oil to the United States, sending prices and tempers rising across the country. Dark Christmas trees, lowered thermostats, empty gas tanks, and the new fifty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit all suggested that America was a nation in decline. “Don’t be fuelish” became the national motto. Though the embargo would end the following year, it introduced a new kind of insecurity into American life―an insecurity that would only intensify when the Iranian Revolution led to new shortages at the end of the decade. As Meg Jacobs shows, the oil crisis had a decisive impact on American politics. If Vietnam and Watergate taught us that our government lied, the energy crisis taught us that our government didn’t work. Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter promoted ambitious energy policies that were meant to rally the nation and end its dependence on foreign oil, but their efforts came to naught. The Democratic Party was divided, with older New Deal liberals who prized access to affordable energy squaring off against young environmentalists who pushed for conservation. Meanwhile, conservative Republicans argued that there would be no shortages at all if the government got out of the way and let the market work. The result was a political stalemate and panic across the country: miles-long gas lines, Big Oil conspiracy theories, even violent strikes by truckers. Jacobs concludes that the energy crisis of the 1970s became, for many Americans, an object lesson in the limitations of governmental power. Washington proved unable to design an effective national energy policy, and the result was a mounting skepticism about government intervention that set the stage for the rise of Reaganism. She offers lively portraits of key figures, from Nixon and Carter to the zealous energy czar William Simon and the young Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. Jacobs’s absorbing chronicle ends with the 1991 Gulf War, when President George H. W. Bush sent troops to protect the free flow of oil in the Persian Gulf. It was a failure of domestic policy at home that helped precipitate military action abroad. As we face the repercussions of a changing climate, a volatile oil market, and continued turmoil in the Middle East, Panic at the Pump is a necessary and lively account of a formative period in American political history. "If you want to understand the world, you need to understand oil, and if you want to understand oil and its political power, this book is required reading." ―Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy " Panic at the Pump is a thoughtful tour of an era we would rather not think about, carefully retracing the economics that made the United States dependent on oil imports, and the crises that made that dependence so painful." ―Matthew L. Wald, The New York Times Book Review "In her well-researched book Panic at the Pump , Meg Jacobs takes us back to the twin oil shocks of the 1970s . . . It was, Jacobs argues persuasively, a time that transformed American politics . . . [she] gives us a rich chronicle of this period . . . At a time when political candidates are bickering over how to make America great again, there is much to recommend in this book." ― Steven Mufson, The Washington Post "Wonderfully insightful . . . Making excellent use of a plethora of published and unpublished sources, Jacobs deftly draws together the manifold strands that made up the U.S. response to the oil shocks that began with the Arab oil embargo of 1973 and continued for the rest of the decade . . . Jacobs convincingly demonstrates its long-term consequences . . . [and] succeeds masterfully in explaining both the way the oil crises of the 1970s unfolded and how they helped to shape subsequent developments, domestic as well as foreign . . . Panic at the Pump is without question an important book that contributes mightily to our understanding of the modern American state, the U.S. political system, and contemporary U.S. foreign policy." ―Mary Ann Heiss, American Historical Review "In 1973, 'oil shock' engulfed the United States as the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries embargoed exports. Historian Meg Jacobs incisively chronicles the ensuing policy war . . . That battle, Jacobs argues, reverberates in fracking and climate-change policy today, and offers lessons for the transition to a fossil-free future." ― Nature "Jacobs, a Princeton historian, has written a history of the political battles over energy that wracked the United States in the years following the Arab oil embargo in 1973. The energy crisis, she contends, transformed American politics, decimating liberalism and bringing anti-government conservatives to power." ―Marc Levinson, The Wall Street Journal "Jacobs’s account is more descriptive than prescriptive, but, in the interest of economic, environmental, and physical security