In this relatively short (149 pages of text) monograph, an adaptation of his doctoral dissertation, Michael Camp attempts to explore the tensions between American energy and environmental policies in the wake of the 1973 oil embargo. While Camp identifies the October 1973 oil shock as a central starting point for the tensions he wants to investigate, the bulk of his research focuses on the Carter years at the end of the 1970s. The result is a slight disconnect between expectations raised by the book's subtitle and content; perhaps it would be more effective to subtitle the work “Energy and Environmental Politics in the Late 1970s.” This small quibble aside, the text sets out to investigate how national policy played out on the local level, using Appalachia—specifically eastern Tennessee—as his site for analysis.With a healthy mix of primary and secondary sources, Camp weaves together a cogent narrative exploring the interplay between energy and environmental policies within the Nixon/Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations, as well as the sentiments of the general public during these years. Overall, the text is approachable even for those not well versed in late 1970s politics, though it is very much a political history. This is not meant as a negative, regardless of what some may want to suggest. Camp's story hinges on the interplay of policy concerns and public interest, effectively demonstrating how political history can integrate local/regional history and sociocultural approaches to political history to gain a fuller understanding of the policies and prescriptions offered by presidential administrations. Camp's engaging style draws the reader into a compelling discussion of a nation attempting to wrestle between energy demands and environmental desires and how this ambivalence plays out at national and local levels.Through five chapters, Camp explores the disintegration of the liberal regulatory consensus that held sway in American national politics during the Nixon administration and the rise of a deregulatory, antigovernment politics emblematic of the Reagan administration. In this way, Camp joins a growing swath of historians attempting to understand the emergence of the conservative consensus that took hold of American politics at the end of the twentieth century. While Camp's exploration of energy policy and its tensions with environmental concerns adds a needed voice in this scholarship, his overall analysis would benefit from integrating Jefferson Cowie's argument in The Great Exception (2016). Cowie argues that the New Deal coalition was always a temporary and aberrant entity that would inevitably collapse when the unique conditions that gave rise to it ceased to exist. The turmoil of the Sixties shook loose the ties that bound together this coalition, thus it should come as little surprise that by the 1970s the regulatory regime it supported would also begin to crumble. Camp acknowledges the corrosion of the New Deal coalition, but a stronger statement regarding its temporary and transitory nature may help strengthen his arguments about how Appalachians, and Americans more broadly, responded to the energy crises of the 1970s.On one level, Camp's work highlights something crucial about the American character—Americans are not really good at sacrificing, especially when it runs counter to their consumer demands. Whether it was rationing or calls for conservation, Americans balked when their leaders, especially President Carter, suggested they should consume less energy. Americans' refusal to adhere to conservation efforts in the 1970s reminds one of the black markets during World War II when Americans on the home front ignored calls to conserve or government efforts to reduce consumption through rationing, seeing their illicit actions as not threatening the wider war effort and as individually important. Similarly, the failure of 1970s energy conservationism draws from the emboldened notion of individualism (of the primacy of self-interest) that became a central tenet of the resurgent conservative influence on American politics. Additionally, a conspiratorial populist streak within American politics in 1973 argued that the oil companies had orchestrated an artificial energy crisis to enrich themselves; by the late 1970s this populist anger would turn against the regulatory state, claiming its policies threatened the efficient running of the energy sector. Despite President Carter's deregulatory efforts, his frequent calls for sacrifice resonated as condescending among many observers who resented being spoken to in such manner by the president. Camp concludes, “The decline of environmentalism, coupled with bipartisan acceptance of price deregulation, helped usher in an era of market-based thinking in American energy politics” (17).Camp lays a great deal of the ambivalence of energy and environmental politics at the feet of President Carter. During his term in office, Carter initiated some of the efforts toward deregulation while also expanding the federal regulatory state through the creation of the Department of Energy. At the core of Camp's analysis is a simple calculation: “the Carter administration's political missteps impeded the execution of energy policy and [his] perceived incompetence led to the president's declining public reputation” (66–67). The Carter administration straddled the collapse of the liberal consensus and the rise of a new conservative consensus in American politics. Environmental activism that had generated significant advancements less than a decade earlier failed to move public opinion by decade's end. Furthermore, many who had praised the environmental regulations enacted during the Nixon administration decried these same policies as impediments to energy solutions and general business expansion by the Carter administration. Camp highlights this conflict in the fight for the Tellico Dam and constraints imposed by the Endangered Species Act (chapter 4).In the end, Camp argues that “Carter's initial agenda of conservation and sacrifice was eclipsed by an approach that emphasized the ability of the private sector to address energy challenges,” (145) which was promoted by the Reagan administration. Environmental policies were contingent upon wider public views of the overall health and well-being of the nation's economy and when environmentalism came into conflict with energy policies in times of economic downturn, environmental policies lost out.Instructors looking for a short text to give to their upper-division classes on the rise of conservative politics in the late twentieth century would do well to put Unnatural Resources on their list for consideration. Constructed in a way that will generate ample space for discussion and consideration, Camp's monograph adds an important component to the scholarship on the Carter administration, environmentalism, and energy policy. Furthermore, its engaging style will make it accessible to nonspecialists and those who generally want to build a basis for understanding contemporary energy–environmentalism debates.