A history of the dynamic role of coal in the energy landscape of the United States during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In The Rise and Fall of King Coal , Mark Aldrich explores the pivotal role of coal in the historical energy landscape of the United States. Meticulously researched and clearly written, this analysis of the rise, dominance, and eventual decline of coal as a primary fuel source traces its evolution from the late eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century.  Aldrich explains the factors that contributed to coal's ascendancy and decline, including efficiency, marketing, and the technological advancements that facilitated both its widespread adoption and later languishing. A complex interplay among market forces, government policies, and societal attitudes profoundly shaped the coal industry's trajectory. Challenges and controversies have surrounded the production of coal since its inception, including labor issues, environmental concerns, and resource scarcity. Aldrich's comprehensive approach―which combines historical analysis, economic perspectives, and a deep appreciation for the technological and scientific advancements that transformed the energy landscape―also emphasizes the role of innovation and entrepreneurship in driving energy transitions.  By providing a bottom-up history that underscores the pivotal role of individual choices and market dynamics, The Rise and Fall of King Coal offers valuable insights into the dynamic nature of energy transitions. In lively discussions of domestic cooking and heating, Aldrich emphasizes the importance of women in shaping households' energy choices, and he gives voice to individual women and men as they describe how these decisions raised their standard of living. This book represents a seminal contribution to the field of energy history and highlights the complex interplay of factors that have shaped the evolution of energy use in the United States. For more than a century, coal improved ordinary Americans' comfort, convenience, and cleanliness, and Mark Aldrich persuasively shows the centrality of entrepreneurs, competition, and male and female consumers in coal's emergence and diminution. Accessible tables provide a quantitative account of American energy use and render the book still more valuable. This is a fundamentally important volume, written in a clear style and informed by massive primary research and generations of historical scholarship. ―Mark H. Rose, coauthor of A Good Place to Do Business: The Politics of Downtown Renewal Since 1945 Mark Aldrich's outstanding study of the history of the rise and fall of coal as key in U.S. energy history deserves close examination by those concerned with energy transitions. Emphasizing the critical nature of market incentives in coordination with other factors in these transitions, Aldrich explores coal as a major element in the industrial, transportation, and domestic domains. ―Joel A. Tarr, coauthor of The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century A fresh, comprehensive, and incisive account of energy transitions in American history, focusing on the rise and demise of coal across 140 years. Extensive data and fine-grained portraits of technologies bear out Aldrich's analytic case: the rewards and penalties of free markets powerfully drove both innovation and conservation in energy choices. ―John K. Brown, author of Spanning the Gilded Age: James Eads and the Great Steel Bridge Mark Aldrich's meticulous history of market-driven developments in the coal industry documents a constant war on waste that led to solutions for many pressing issues. Policy makers could learn much from this clear text which, unlike most current energy policy discussions, avoids facile energy transition narratives that indict past generations as needlessly wasteful and destructive. ―Pierre Desrochers, coauthor of Population Bombed! Exploding the Link Between Overpopulation and Climate Change [ The Rise and Fall of King Coal ] is recommendable to anyone interested in understanding how coal and markets interacted historically in the USA from the point of view of economic history, business history, history of advertising, history of science and commodity history....With coal exports rising in Indonesia and Australia and absolute production rising in other parts of Asia, the market context of coal is important knowledge, for which Mark Aldrich's book is a wonderful start. ― H-Soz-Kult Mark Aldrich's The Rise and Fall of King Coal offers a sweeping yet richly textured history of coal's central role in the United States' energy economy from the early nineteenth century through the interwar period....a major contribution to the economic and environmental history of energy. ― Journal of Economic History A history of the dynamic role of coal in the energy landscape of the United States during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Mark Aldrich is the Marilyn Carlson Nelson Prof