692 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE trates on gristmills and space heating and gives less attention to oil lamps than to the “poorly paid, wearying, and dangerous way of life” of whalers (p. 124). When he discusses standards of living in modern society, he alludes to household appliances as “electrical gadgets” (pp. 203, 220), and his primary source for the electrical redemption of the household is Robert Caro’s 1982 biography of Lyndon Johnson. In treating this and other topics, Smil seems unaware of key works by well-recognized scholars: Ruth Cowan, here, Reynold Wik on ag ricultural technology, Donald Worster on hydraulic societies, Louis Hunter on the history of industrial power, Terry Reynolds on the waterwheel, and Dolores Greenberg on energy in 19th-century America. Even had he not specifically cited them, one would expect to find their works in his list of suggested readings. Despite its flaws, Energy in World History is a useful addition to Westview Press’s Essays in World History series. Both teachers and students will find it is a good introduction to energy history, and even seasoned investigators may learn something new. For teachers seeking a nice visual way to link big ideas, particularly for those drawn to cycles in history, Smil’s coupling of energy evolution and the har nessing of new prime movers to long-wave business cycles and innova tion clusters in technology from 1800 to the present (pp. 240—41) will provide an intriguing and challenging segue into thoughtful dis cussion. Perhaps this is enough to ask of any essay. James C. Williams Dr. Williams teaches at De Anza College. His study of Energy and the Making of Modem California is forthcoming in the University of Akron Press’s Technology and the Environment series. Powerfrom Wind: A History of Windmill Technology. By Richard L. Hills. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. ix + 324; illustra tions, glossary, notes, bibliography, index. $59.95. Richard L. Hills, an industrial archaeologist and museum profes sional, has given us a valuable resource for understanding the tech niques of windmilling from their origins to their use in modern tur bines for generating electricity. Focusing primarily on Scotland, England, the Netherlands, and the United States, he not only inte grates into his study the efforts of molinologists such as John Shaw, Rex Wailes, Jannis C. Notebaart, and T. Lindsay Baker, but also includes the results of his own investigation of sources such as the early English patents, the records of the Bedford Level Corporation, and many Dutch works unavailable in English. Taken as recently as March 1992, his excellent photographs of the internal and external mechanisms of windmills that still exist or have appeared only re cently provide impressive examples for his narrative. Although he is cautious in presenting possible causes for historical change, his TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 693 hypotheses are provoking. He suggests, for example, that the lack of a braking mechanism around the principal gearwheel of the post mill may have been responsible for the tardy acceptance of the machine during the first half of the 13th century. Preceding the Scientific Revolution, Dutch millwrights of the 16th century appear to have perfected the design of the twisted windmill sail on a strictly empirical basis. Hills proposes that this aerodynamic innovation may have laid the foundation for the beginning of a form of industrial revolution at the turn of that century, particularly on the promontory of the Zaan, north of Amsterdam, where, to support Holland’s overseas empire, numerous windmills were constructed for sawing wood; for manufacturing oil, rope, and paper; and for hulling grain and barley. Hills’s technological discussions are both detailed and informative. This is especially the case when he analyzes the events leading to the late-19th-century development of the self-regulating windmill in which William Cubitt’s system of controlling the sail’s shutters by bell cranks attached to a weight-driven rack and pinion (1807) is com bined with Edmund Lee’s fantail that automatically turns the mill into the wind (1745). This analysis, along with an earlier examination of the appropriate wind forces for activating and sustaining a wind mill, sets the stage for Hills...