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For centuries, power was the province of the gods: Zeus hurled thunderbolts, and mortals shuddered. But that didn't stop men from trying to tame power—on the farm, in the factory, and on the battlefield.  Early in the 20th century, steam and coal gave way to oil. Electrical power systems pioneered by Thomas Edison in the 1880s spread in giant grids across America and around the world. And a young Albert Einstein postulated a special relationship between mass and energy. Then, in 1945, the atomic bomb was dropped. In 1949, the Soviets detonated their own A-bomb, and America responded with the H-bomb. The cold war was launched, and a new lexicon of power emerged. Remember deterrence and mutually assured destruction? The fall of the Soviet Union ended the cold war, but the arsenals remain largely intact. Nuclear power generation stumbled in the 1980s after a couple of scary accidents. This revived interest in wind and solar power, but they still can't compete against cheap oil. Meanwhile, no one knows what to do with spent nuclear fuel, and the world worries about atomic weapons in the wrong hands. After learning to control power, we now must learn to control ourselves.
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