Paul Lucier's Scientists and Swindlers: Consulting on Coal and Oil in America, 1820–1890 presents us with a fascinating and very detailed picture of the men involved with the development of coal and oil in North America in the period from 1820 to 1890. Interestingly enough, the story begins in the nether-reaches of North America. Despite its relatively remote location, Nova Scotia was endowed with an abundance of coal. During the early nineteenth century, Nova Scotia began to supply the New York and Boston markets, as well as other northeastern markets. Recognizing the value of its endowment, Abraham Gesner, a country surgeon turned geologist, and Charles Jackson and Francis Alger, visiting American geologists, soon wrote competing books on the geology and mineralogy of Nova Scotia. A long-simmering controversy was born.

The chapters are grouped by topic: coal, kerosene, and petroleum. The coal section focuses on coal gas, which was primarily used for illumination. In Nova Scotia, a number of law suits emerged, because the material used to make coal gasthe Albert mineralwas asphaltic in nature. The British crown reserved the rights to coal deposits in land grants, so the question was whether the Albert mineral was coal or not. The two protagonists in the court cases were none other than Gesner and Jackson. Even after the suits ended, the scientific debate on what coal was and how it was formed continued for some time. This debate was highly salient, because many of the players were engaged in the search for coal as part of state geological surveys. Understanding what coal was and how it was formed would facilitate finding coal deposits.

Kerosene represented another stage in the progression. Companies heated coal in a retort, distilled the resulting oil and treated it to remove impurities. For kerosene to be useful, however, a new lamp had to be found. A suitable model was discovered in Vienna, and by the late 1850s consumers had begun to adopt kerosene in droves. Court battles emerged at this time, now featuring Gesner, who held the patent for kerosene, and James Young, a Scot who held the patent for pariffine. Was coal oil kerosene or pariffine? This represented a continuation of the earlier debate regarding what coal was. The scientific community split on the issue. Opposing views were featured in the American and British patent trials.

The final stage was petroleum. Pieces of the petroleum story will already be familiar to individuals knowledgeable about petroleum's history. Before reading the book, I wondered about the overlap between this book and standard histories such as Daniel Yergin's The Prize, Ron Chernow's Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., Harold Williamson and Arnold Duam's The American Petroleum Industry: The Age of Illumination, 1859–1899, or similar books. The overlap is smaller than one might think, because of its focus on scientists and swindlers. Other authors tend to give them relatively short shrift, whereas here they come alive. The other reason for the small overlap is that much of the book considers coal and kerosene, which tend to receive little attention in books on petroleum.

The book will be of particular interest to legal historians and individuals interested in patents, because of its detailed examination of important early court cases. For scholars interested in mineral discovery and their evolving use, there is also much to recommend the book. Key players, notably geologists, are discussed extensively. Their movement from the private sector to government and universities and back again was typical of the period, and yet one rarely finds such a detailed chronology of key actors and their various enterprises. Unlike standard biographies, which tend to focus primarily on a single individual, Lucier is able to provide a broader overview of the individuals and their interaction over time. The business history aspect is also interesting, since many of the players were entrepreneurs or investors in coal and oil-related enterprises.

This book fits squarely in the history of science tradition and so does not offer as many tables or as much quantitative or economic analysis as an economic historian might wish for. What the book does offer, however, is an encyclopedic and extremely detailed investigation of the development of science related to coal and oil during this crucial period.