Happily, in just the last 72 hours, I’ve received two key books for my research: Ken Butti and John Perlin’s A Golden Thread: 2500 Years of Solar Architecture and Technology and Robert Righter’s Wind Energy in America: A History. These texts, along with the Canadian Center for Archictecture’s Out of Gas exhibit book, are absolute must-reads about the history of alternative energy.

I’m the farthest in Righter’s book and I’m immensely pleased with how well-researched and fanatically sourced it is. He’s particularly good at combing through the agricultural journals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries to ferret out the story of the small wind-electric plants installed on farms across the country. He argues that most farmers got their first exposure to the pleasures of electricity through these small units produced by Jacobs and Wincharger and Aero-Electric. The section on Marcellus Jacobs and his turbines is one of the finest pieces of alt energy history that I’ve read.

He traces this reliable, excellent wind power generator through its various ups-and-downs, including a unit’s travel to Little America in Antarctica with Byrd, the explorer. (That’s the image). That picture was borrowed from the still-operating Jacobs Wind Electric Co.

Perlin and Butti’s book, first published in 1980, is fascinating not just for the history it covers but as a piece of history itself. On the back we find sparkling reviews from a host of high-level publications.

The New York Times calls it, “A clear and evocative account of the 2,500-year history of a technology–solar energy–that many people thought was a purely 20th century development.” The Washington Post provides an even better review calling it a “careful, thoughtful”  book that touches on “an awesome range of solar uses and issues.”

And now this seminal book is basically out-of-print and hard-to-find as hundreds (thousands?) of lesser “green” books flood the shelves. It’s a shame.