This 17-chapter book (which may also be used as a textbook) provides a thorough insight into the basic facts about energy as well as new and transitional technologies such as synthetic fuels. The book also helps examine the economic, societal, and political aspects of the energy situation in detail, consistently providing technical data to support the discussions. Topic areas dealt with in the 17 chapters include: "1985" revisited; the nature of energy; the laws of energy conversion; the efficiency of energy conversion; energy and the industrial society; patterns of energy consumption; electricity, energy and air pollution; fossil fuels and the environment; projections of energy futures and some failures of such projections; mixed blessings of nuclear energy; fuels from oil shale and tar sands, fuels from coal, and fuel cells; alternative energy sources; solar energy; energy conservation; energy and society; and energy policy: toward the year 2000. Six appendices are included with data on energy and discussions of large and small numbers and the mathematics of energy, heat and heat engines, the nature of electricity, the meteorology of air pollution, and energy from the nucleus of atoms. (JN)