Francesco Gerali reviews Reflecting Oil, edited by Ernst Logar, a volume grounded in a five-year arts-based research project that places crude oil at the center of inquiry. The book treats oil as a substance, a system, and a structuring condition of modern life. Gerali situates the volume within energy humanities and argues that it offers a methodological intervention: artistic research can function as a form of knowledge production capable of reframing how we understand petroculture and transition.

Imre Szeman's new book, "Futures of the Sun: The Struggle Over Renewable Life," explores how dominant powers—from "meta-entrepreneurs" like Elon Musk and Bill Gates to nationalist governments and petro-populists—compete to define a "common sense" of renewable futures that preserves the very systems driving the climate crisis. In this unorthodox review of the book, communications scholar and theorist Tanner Mirrlees introduces the text through a series of thematically connected concepts and questions that chart his response to the book and offer entry points for prospective readers. Mirrlees presents "Futures of the Sun" as a text that it will be important and useful to think with in a perplexing moment of flux and uncertainty in global climate politics.

In her review of Victor Seow's groundbreaking recent book, "Carbon Technocracy: Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia" (University of Chicago Press, 2021), Elizabeth Miller notes the shared features of modern extractivism that are evident across states and geographies.