‘This was an opportunity’: Dr. Brian Black Reflects on New Book

Madison Eisaman

Staff Writer

Dr. Brian Black, Division Head of Arts and Humanities, has recently wrote a new book, To Have and Have Not: Energy in World History.

I recently spoke to Dr. Black about his new book, writing process, and inspiration.

To Have and Have Not: Energy in World History will be released around Earth Day 2022.

In your words, what exactly is To Have and Have Not: Energy in World History about?

My effort in writing this book was to create a kind of starting point for people to use energy and its story to tell history, that really hadn’t been done by historians before. It’s been done by people who know a lot about energy, but not necessarily people who knew about how we structure a world history chronology, and so that’s what I did. I taught a lot of world history and it’s neat to find the commonalities between very different people and eras. This was an opportunity to take one of those commonalities, energy, and magnify it. Typically, books in this series are used by people who want a supplemental textbook. They’ll have their overall text that connects all the dots with a supplemental text that lets them magnify one issue. This was to give energy the opportunity to be that. Historians such as myself, we often do micro stories. This sort of book is a macro story. These set the table for people to tell what kind of micro stories need to be told.

How long have you been working on your book? 

I wrote it intensively then focused away for two years, but I have been working on the topic for longer than that probably. I’d say five years. As I’ve mentioned, I would say that I’m a historian of energy in general, but I had never really written something with the breadth to be all about energy. This was my chance to write about other parts of it.

What inspired you to write about energy?

I don’t want to sound sappy, but it was at least partly because it hadn’t been done. When you create a textbook like this, it’s giving the field of history something new. It’s kind of a service in that way, that was kind of my goal after years of going to conferences and working with people. There’s been a lot of work with energy and history in general that I’ve been part of. This was an opportunity to offer people, who might not have that specialty, an opportunity to bring that into their classes. That’s what I hope will happen with this. Energy is more of a topic that’s basic. Everybody uses energy, everybody accepts that humans need to use energy, and so this was just an opportunity to tell the story of humans from that angle.

What made you the right person to write this?

I think it was partly having taught the class a number of times where I would organize it around energy and its role in different human societies. That’s pretty weird, not many do that. I am a professional writer, so I think that helps too. It just became kind of fun to see how if you are basically organizing your view of history as wearing certain glasses, or a focus in a certain area, in this case to look at energy in the story of humans. You never think of it as energy to put up a sail on a ship, but then you get to see the idea of putting up a sail changed so many people’s lives. It made things possible that were never possible before. The species literally figures out that the more energy it has access to, the better off it’s going to be and live.

What was the goal of the book?

The ultimate goal of the book is to tell the story of the transition that we’re in now and to give people confidence that we have gone through transitions before and that there’s no reason to fear going through one now. We went from animal powered transportation to gasoline transportation in the early 1900s. Just like we’re going now from gas powered transportation to electric transportation. People were perplexed saying, “How am I going to get gasoline? How am I going to be able to access that on trips? It would be much easier if I just had to feed my horse.” I hope that a book like To Have or Have Not makes people less fearful of it. It’s kind of funky to think that I might write a book that helps the transition happen in a certain way, and I hope it will.

How did you come up with the title To Have and Have Not: Energy in World History ?

I love Earnest Hemingway, and so as I taught this topic, I have always talked about it with that term, have or have not, in mind because it kind of explains in a capsule how the developed and the less developed world comes around, especially if you’re focused around energy. Also, like I said, I love Earnest Hemingway, so the idea that my book might be on the book next to his novel of that same name is pretty exciting.

What is the most difficult part of your writing process?

Organizing it—in a project like this, it’s to come up with the skeleton and the flesh is kind of easy, but how to find the organizing scheme behind something as big as this is both exciting and daunting. If I teach it a few times, I’ll figure out how to organize it and how it should proceed and then the rest can just happen. It’s that sitting back and deciding how the material in the chapters kind of function best for someone to understand the topic really well that I get really excited to figure out. It’s like a puzzle.

Is there anything particular about Penn State that has been invaluable to your writing, writing process, publishing, etc.?

It’s the interdisciplinary. I am the poster child for interdisciplinary, I teach in both history and environmental studies and you can’t do that every place. A lot of people get pigeon holed, they just teach this or they just teach that. As I mentioned, most of writing projects have begun in the classroom and that’s where I figure things out. Penn State Altoona has really given me the opportunity to do that in the classroom and over the years, especially the environmental studies program has done that. Students are part of it, whether they help me with the writing which some have previously, or just been a part of the classes I am teaching.

What is one piece of advice you would give to aspiring writers?

Do it. Don’t be afraid. Don’t assume that you can’t. Give it a try because that’s how I started, working for school newspapers and writing whatever anybody would let me write. I look forward to getting into projects now that focus more on me as a writer and less on the historical material that I’m getting into. The book I’m writing right now is more for a general audience and it uses history as a jumping off point. That’s more what I would like to do in the future.