Panic at the Pump: The Energy Crisis and the Transformation of American Politics in the 1970s

In retelling that story, Meg Jacobs’s wonderfully detailed and lucid Panic at the Pump is a major contribution to late twentieth century U.S. Anyone seeking to understand the way we live now will do well to consult Jacobs's incisive account of a decade at once remote and resonant." Jon Meacham, author of Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George H. political system, and contemporary U.S. With long gas lines, violent trucker strikes, and contentious debates in Washington about regulation, almost every American who lived through the era felt the weight of this challenge and vividly remembers the fears it provoked. Bush"The energy crisis of the 1970s created a political perfect storm, hastening the crisis of an already divided Democratic Party and clearing the way for the age of Ronald Reagan. Historian Meg Jacobs incisively chronicles the ensuing policy war That battle, Jacobs argues, rev

. She is also the coauthor of Conservatives in Power: The Reagan Years, 1981–1989 (2010). Meg Jacobs teaches history and public affairs at Princeton University. Her first book, Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America (2005), won the Organization of American Historians’ Ellis W. Hawley Prize, as we

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. 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. Though the embargo would end the following year, it introduced a new kind of insecurity into American lifean 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. Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter promoted ambitious energy policies that were meant to rally the nation and end its

The scholarship has rightly been called into question Jacobs' book is a mediocre, workable book that follows a simple formula: almost each paragraph starts out with a quotation from a newspaper, followed by a few sentences of analysis, before ending with another quotation from a separate source. It was a pain to get through--and I read energy history books like this for a living. As a compendium of newspaper and magazine reports about gasoli. this is a great reminder of events that shaped politics and policy up fozz46 If you lived through the gas crisis and rampant inflation of the `70`s,this is a great reminder of events that shaped politics and policy up to present day. For younger readers,it will probably be a bit tedious,as many of the political figures involved will be unknown to them. Nonetheless,a great ,well researched account of a period in recent American history that changed our fundamental . I highly recommend it to anyone interesting in deeper understanding of the Ronald G. Oechsler Lively, eminently readable and thoroughly researched account of the subject. I highly recommend it to anyone interesting in deeper understanding of the relatively ineffective responses of successive administrations and the policy community to this major shock to the U.S. economy. Prof. Jacobs his a rich understanding of U.S. history which brings a unique depth to her work.