The United States experienced its first prolonged energy crisis during the 1970s. Gasoline prices rose, and some parts of the nation had scarce supplies, leading to long lines of vehicles at filling stations. The Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) imposed an oil embargo on the United States and some European countries. These developments, combined with windfall profits by giant oil companies and an inability of the U.S. government to adequately respond to the situation, gave Americans their first collective and compound sensations of energy insecurity. The effects of the decade have rippled through American history since, not least in American energy policy. To reflect on the decade, University of Houston history professors Joseph Pratt and Martin Melosi organized a conference in 2007 that assembled scholars who have been studying the energy history of the 1970s. One of the participants, Robert Lifset, has edited contributions from the participants to produce American Energy Policy in the 1970s, which will serve as an excellent resource for energy historians, policymakers, and students alike.

Lifset has organized the volume's eleven chapters into four sections: “Political Leadership,” “Foreign Policy,” “Supply,” and “Demand.” The two chapters in the first section focus on the two presidents of the 1970s, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, who tried to initiate new policy responses to the nation's energy crises. Yanek Mieczkowski, whose 2005 book explores the Ford presidency more broadly, provides a summary analysis of Ford's efforts—in the wake of the lifting of Eisenhower's imported-oil quotas, Nixon's oil-price restrictions, and the OAPEC oil embargo—to get Congress to develop a comprehensive energy policy, addressing the issue from multiple perspectives, including domestic production, imports, and conservation. Jay Hakes's brief chapter on the Carter administration summarizes some of the new federal initiatives—for example, creating the Department of Energy and providing federal support for new alternative sources of energy—that Carter implemented, before several of them were reversed by the Reagan administration in the 1980s.

The second section, on foreign policy, features two chapters on Iran in the 1970s. David Painter's article puts U.S. relations with Iran in the context of major changes that were underway in global oil markets generally. The United States, western European nations, and their oil companies had for decades enjoyed dominant positions in their business relations with Venezuela and Middle Eastern oil-producing countries, but the oil-producing nations were increasingly demanding, and securing, higher percentages of the profits generated by oil companies in their territories. Painter locates the 1970s Iranian crisis in this larger context of resistance by Western countries and companies to the shifts in geopolitical power that were underway, arguing as well that diplomatic historians generally have paid insufficient attention to the role of oil in 1970s history. Steve Marsh's chapter puts the Iranian crisis in a different historical context: that of the interactions by the United States and Britain with Iran from the 1950s—when the Western powers thwarted Iran's efforts to begin selling oil to the Soviet block—to the first decade of this century.

The third section, on supply, is the broadest in scope, with chapters exploring several facets of the federal government's efforts to increase and diversify energy supplies. Tyler Priest's chapter focuses on Shell Oil's move into deepwater drilling in the 1970s and its accompanying lobbying of the federal government to loosen offshore leasing programs, leading to a new federal leasing system introduced in the early 1980s and a huge increase in deepwater drilling in the 1990s. Bruce Beaubouef analyzes lessons the government learned in the 1970s using the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as a tool in responding to recurring energy crises, especially as a means to protect consumers (marking a shift away from protecting producers), in an era in which the United States could no longer rely on its own supplies to satisfy domestic demand for oil. The 1970s saw the beginning of major efforts by the federal government to encourage development of alternative energy sources. Jason Theriot focuses on ethanol, arguing that the federal government was ill suited to engage the complexity and long-term changes inherent in the business of developing an alternative source like alcohol fuels. Jeff Womack analyzes a panacea briefly explored by NASA: solar-powered satellites that could beam energy to users anywhere on Earth. The last chapter in the section addresses nuclear power. The oil crises of the 1970s contributed to continuing advocacy for greater reliance on nuclear power. Yet, as Samuel Walker shows, opposition to nuclear power grew through the decade, especially due to public concerns over safety. As a consequence, the federal government licensed no new nuclear power plants from 1978 until 2012.

Demand is the topic of the fourth section. Environmental historian Brian Black explores how the emergence of serious gasoline scarcity stimulated multivalent responses by American consumers and policy makers alike. Segments of society sought various ways to resolve tensions between, on the one hand, growing awareness of the environmental consequences of using so much gasoline for automobility and, on the other, Americans’ deepening commitment to maintaining the personal freedom implicit in that mobility. Lifset closes the volume with a chapter analyzing the shift that took place in the electric-utility industry. For decades, regulated utilities had remained profitable by taking advantage of economies of scale to both increase supply and reduce price. Increasing environmentalism in the 1970s helped bring an end to electric-utility companies’ long-standing business model and helped foster a new model, in which utilities became major proponents encouraging conservation of electricity by all classes of customers.

The 1970s were pivotal years in America's and the world's energy relationships; many old policy approaches ended, important new policies were tested and implemented, and the need for sound and effective energy policies has only increased since then. Business historians and policymakers alike who want new insights into that formative decade will welcome American Energy Policy in the 1970s.