John Perlin - Let It Shine: The 6,000-Year Story of Solar Energy

Praise for A Golden Thread, the previous edition of Let It Shine

Western man has been using the suns rays for useful purposes since the days of ancient Greece, as this comprehensive, carefully researched, clearly written history of solar architecture and technology makes abundantly clear. The illustrations and diagrams that illuminate the text on almost every page are especially fine examples of modern graphic presentations.

New York Times

It is a humbling book. Handsomely illustrated and lucidly written, A Golden Thread is a rich mine of information.

Los Angeles Times

The history of mankinds efforts to use the suns energy is a fascinating story, one told in a lively yet scholarly manner here. The triumphs and defeats of solar pioneers help us appreciate what a solar future may yet hold.

Christian Science Monitor

This book is sorely needed in the solar publication field, for although there are any number of how-to books on solar technology, few if any examine the history of this much-neglected energy source in any depth.

Denver Post

I just happened to be carrying A Golden Thread in my suitcase at Princeton. On my way home, I devoured it. Richly illustrated and thoroughly documented, it is a feast for the most critical historians mind and eye.

Technology Review

This book will provide hours of reading pleasure and, at the same time, humble anyone who thinks that solar architecture is a new thing under the sun.

American Institute of Architects (AIA) Journal

This informative and sobering book traces the evolution of solar applications. Excellent graphics and a highly readable style make this book the best survey available.

Library Journal

Praise for A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization by John Perlin

Outstanding This book takes one of those bold imaginative sweeps through world history that leaves you full of excitement, as suddenly events seem to fall into a pattern for the first time. Perlin not only presents us with a bold hypothesis profusely documented and illustrated, he does it with a storytellers pace and ability to surprise.

BBC World Service

Delight is not a word one expects to use in connection with deforestation, but John Perlin has certainly written a delightful book. It deserves to be a classic and should make a welcome present for anyone who enjoys a good read.

Forest and Conservation History

Well documented and illustrated, it is history at its best.

American Forests

Perlin deftly combines a balance of social and ecological values as well as lessons for the immediate future.

Booklist

Like some Greek epic poem spanning 4,000 years of civilization an impressive array of research and a novel topic.

Los Angeles Times

The new edition of Perlins landmark work again brings needed attention to one of the primary concerns of the modern era.

Forest History Today

This work captures the significant impact of wood on past and present civilizations. Well written and well illustrated.

Choice

A journey through time a sort of Western Civ. 101 with a focus on the crucial role of wood in the rise and fall of states and cultures Solid survey that adds significant dimension to our picture of the current crisis.

Kirkus Reviews

Perlin has accumulated what seems every reference to the use and misuse of forests in the period beginning with Gilgamesh and ending with the 1880 U.S. census. In between, he chronicles the deforestation of Asia, the Mediterranean, Europe, the West Indies, and the United States by kings, warlords, and robber barons for purposes ranging from building navies to smelting iron to clearing land for cash crops. The research is exhaustive.

Library Journal

Praise for From Space to Earth by John Perlin

John Perlins book gives a taste of the tremendous difficulties that early pioneers had to overcome to turn Charles Fritts 1885 invention of a selenium-based solar module to todays booming photovoltaic business. Perlin gives a vivid and fascinating account of the advances of photovoltaics on Earth. Presenting the development of photovoltaic cells in such a personalized manner makes it a much more lively and interesting read than a mere technical account would have done.

Nature

The step-by-step progress of photovoltaics has elicited little fanfare. It is my hope that From Space to Earth will end the silence. The book is gripping to read and its themes long overdue in book-length form.

Photon magazine

This just in time story of the development of photovoltaics merits the most serious attention and cannot fail to stimulate the readers interest in both the episodes recounted and their interdisciplinary applications and prospects. The author has provided us with a good read, and the illustrations enhance ones enjoyment. It is a fascinating story, told so that even an individual without technical training can comprehend the breakthroughs which led to todays widespread and ever increasing adoption of solar power.

Interdisciplinary Sciences Review

John Perlins delightful tour through the development of photovoltaics (PV) answers not only the question of what is new under the sun, but most importantly, how we got there. Perlin charts the evolution of the photovoltaic industry from its beginnings to the present. Its the best and most readable book on photovoltaic research, policy, and market growth.

Whole Earth

Twenty years ago John Perlin published A Golden Thread, a comprehensive and authoritative history of solar energy that remains today one of the best books on the subject. Perlins present book is an equally impressive story of the twentieth-century solar photovoltaics industry. Even diehard opponents of solar energy should find it compelling.

Isis, the official journal of the History of Science Society

LET IT SHINE

Also by John Perlin

A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization

From Space to Earth: The Story of Solar Electricity

Copyright 2013 by John Perlin

An earlier version of this book was published under the title A Golden Thread: 2,500 Years of Solar Architecture and Technology by Cheshire Books / Van Nostrand Reinhold and Company in 1980.

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, or other without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Some of the material in Let It Shine appeared in a different form in the Pacific Standard magazine.

The permission acknowledgments on are an extension of the copyright page.

Text design by Tona Pearce Myers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Perlin, John.

[Golden thread]

Let it shine : the 6,000-year story of solar energy. Fully revised and expanded / John Perlin ; foreword by Amory Lovins.

pages cm

Revision of: A golden thread / by Ken Butti and John Perlin. Palo Alto : Cheshire Books ; New York : Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1980.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-60868-132-7 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-60868-133-4 (ebook) 1. Solar energyHistory. 2. Architecture and solar radiationHistory. I. Title.