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Jeff Manuel

@jeffmanuel.bsky.social

1.4K followers 810 following 1.3K posts

Historian of Energy, Technology, and the Environment; Professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville; Coauthor of "Ethanol: A Hemispheric History for the Future of Biofuels;” Public and Oral History Practitioner. jeffmanuel.com

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Jeff Manuel @jeffmanuel.bsky.social · 7d

It's the official publication day for ETHANOL: A HEMISPHERIC HISTORY FOR THE FUTURE OF BIOFUELS. Want to know why the US turns 40 percent of the corn crop into fuel? How the US and Brazil became the world's two largest ethanol producers? Tom Rogers and I have answers.
www.oupress.com/978080619601...

Ethanol - University of Oklahoma Press

Though ethanol, a liquid fuel made from agricultural byproducts, has generated controversy in recent years—good or bad for the environment? a big-ag boon o...

www.oupress.com

Jeff Manuel @jeffmanuel.bsky.social · 1h

We're all in the commodity business in one way or another.

Jeff Manuel @jeffmanuel.bsky.social · 1h

Full program for "The Power of Energy" online conference sponsored by the Hagley Library, 10/30-10/31. Looking forward to this! 🗃️

the power of energy
A virtual conference organized by the Hagley Library
October 30 and 31, 2025
Advance registration required, hagley.org/FC2025
9-9:15 - WELCOME
9:15-10:45 - ENERGY SOVEREIGNTIES
Jennifer Eaglin, Ohio State University, “Alternative
Energies, the Environment, and Development in Brazil”
Ashoka Manchala, University of Zurich, “Shifting
Contexts of a Coal Company: The Singareni
Collieries Company Limited and ‘Semi-
sovereign’ Energy in Hyderabad, 1886-1952”
Comment: Elizabeth Chatterjee, University of Chicago
11:00-12:45 - ENERGY FLOWS,
INFORMATION FLOWS
Tom Cinq-Mars, Duke University, “In Search
of “Friendship”: An Archaeology of the World’s
Longest Oil Pipeline in the Soviet Bloc”
Amanda DeMarco, University of California-San
Diego, “China’s “Informational Opening”: Reform-Era
PRC-FRG Coal Delegations as Market Research”
Elliott Sturtevant, Florida International University,
“Nature’s Storehouse is Man’s Benefactor: Designing
Infinite Growth along the Niagara Frontier”
Comment: Christopher Jones, Arizona State
1:30-3:00 - COERCED ENERGIES
Parveen Kumar, University of Delhi, “Forced
Labor and the Energy Infrastructure of
Japanese Wartime Expansion in SE Asia”
Christian Robles-Baez, Stanford University,
“Railwayless: How Human and Animal Power in
Brazil Paved the Way for the Global Coffee Market”
Comment: Diana Montano, Washington
University in St. Louis
FRIDAY OCTOBER 31
9:00-10:45 - ENERGY IN THE HOME
BEYOND THE DOMESTIC
Minseok Jang, University of Albany, SUNY,
“Burning from Below: Yeontan and the Birth
of South Korean Environmentalism”
Alexandra Quantrill, Pratt Institute, “Women and
the Grid: Electrical Experiments in 1920s Britain”
Rebecca Geoffroy-Schwinden, University of North Texas,
“Gunpowder, Industrial Capitalism, and Tata at the Piano”
Comment: Chelsea Schields, University
of California - Irvine
11:00-12:45 - HISTORIES OF
CONTEMPORARY TECHNOLOGIES
Nancy Campbell, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, “Our
Shared Ledger: A Parochial Energy Histor…

Jeff Manuel @jeffmanuel.bsky.social · 1h

Great article. This will be useful in my undergraduate history of technology classes. And I appreciate that you connected Whitney's story back to hay. Antebellum America—it was hay bales all the way down.

Reposted by Jeff Manuel

Joe Schiller @jschiller.bsky.social · 3h

Not sure how I missed this post, but I did not miss the book in my mail. Cheers @jeffmanuel.bsky.social !!!

A book with a gas pump handle and hose spewing corn cobs, and sugar cane rising at the bottom on the cover. There is a bookshelf in the background of the photo. The cover reads "Ethanol: A Hemispheric History for the Future of Biofuels," and the authors are Jeffrey T. Manuel and Thomas D. Rogers.

Jeff Manuel @jeffmanuel.bsky.social · 2h

Thanks, Joe. It was a pleasure working with you and the Press to make this book a commodity you can hold in your hands!

Jeff Manuel @jeffmanuel.bsky.social · 7h

If you can stomach an academic novel mid-semester, Julie Schumacher’s _Dear Committee Members_

Jeff Manuel @jeffmanuel.bsky.social · 22h

...even if history itself doesn’t give us an answer. And those are climate change and demographic change.”
www.northwestern.edu/academics/no...

Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences: Northwestern University

www.northwestern.edu

Jeff Manuel @jeffmanuel.bsky.social · 22h

"The human race faces two of the greatest challenges that it has ever faced. And these have no real precedent so history is not a very good guide here, but it’s something that we have to face and we have to think about with the tools that history provides us +

Jeff Manuel @jeffmanuel.bsky.social · 23h

Last but not least, I like this photo of a kid on a horse in an 1898 flower parade. Just a neat photo. The end.
madison-historical.siue.edu/archive/item...

1898 Photograph of a Boy Dressed as a Herald in a Parade during Edwardsville's Free Street Fair Flower Parade – Madison Historical

Online Encyclopedia and Digital Archive for Madison County, Illinois

madison-historical.siue.edu

Jeff Manuel @jeffmanuel.bsky.social · 23h

when a mob that had lynched a German immigrant, Robert Prager, was acquitted in minutes while a band played patriotic music. I wrote an article on the topic in 2018:
werehistory.org/the-lynching...

The Lynching of Robert Prager

The high-water mark of the anti-immigrant and anti-German hysteria that gripped the nation during World War I

werehistory.org

Jeff Manuel @jeffmanuel.bsky.social · 23h

*Cool 1919 photo of a liberty loan drive at the Madison County courthouse. I didn't realize that the WW1 liberty bond drives continued after the war. Also, this courthouse saw one of the most egregious civil rights violations of the war months earlier +
madison-historical.siue.edu/archive/item...

1919 Photograph of People Celebrating the Victory Liberty Loan in Edwardsville, Illinois – Madison Historical

Online Encyclopedia and Digital Archive for Madison County, Illinois

madison-historical.siue.edu

Jeff Manuel @jeffmanuel.bsky.social · 23h

*This 1912 photo of a woman shooting a cannon to kick off Madison County's (Illinois) centennial. As we head into what looks like a bummer of a semiquincentennial in 2026, I'm taking heart by looking at past commemorations.
madison-historical.siue.edu/archive/item...

1912 Photograph of Eleanor Boeschenstein and Other Women Shooting a Cannon at Start of Madison County Centennial – Madison Historical

Online Encyclopedia and Digital Archive for Madison County, Illinois

madison-historical.siue.edu

Jeff Manuel @jeffmanuel.bsky.social · 23h

A few highlights for me:
*As an energy historian, I love this photo of stockholders shaking hands outside a coal mine in Staunton, IL. The imagery of US coal mining is Appalachian-focused. We rarely get to see images of mining on the flat prairie.
madison-historical.siue.edu/archive/item...

1904 Photograph of New Staunton Coal Company Mine with Original Stock Holders – Madison Historical

Online Encyclopedia and Digital Archive for Madison County, Illinois

madison-historical.siue.edu

Jeff Manuel @jeffmanuel.bsky.social · 23h

Students in my digital archiving studio class have finished a neat collection of late 19th-early 20th century black and white photos from Madison County, Illinois. Check them out if you like midwestern history.

Now freely available here: madison-historical.siue.edu/archive/item...

Godfrey Photograph Collection – Madison Historical

Online Encyclopedia and Digital Archive for Madison County, Illinois

madison-historical.siue.edu

Jeff Manuel @jeffmanuel.bsky.social · 1d

Thanks for sharing this. I had the rare privilege of taking classes with Mokyr as an undergrad many years ago. Although I stuck with history rather than economics, Mokyr was key in inspiring me to consider a career in academia.

Jeff Manuel @jeffmanuel.bsky.social · 1d

Absolutely. And at a moment when old routes to academic success were collapsing, Twitter in its heyday opened new pathways, essentially bringing the individual “influencer” model to academia, for better and for worse.

Jeff Manuel @jeffmanuel.bsky.social · 1d

Also shooting from the hip here (as usual for me), but I think you're right. I suspect the key technical change was 2000s blogging, which let scholars bypass editors to reach "the public." Then the Great Recession wiped out an already shaky path into academic jobs at the end of the decade.

Jeff Manuel @jeffmanuel.bsky.social · 1d

We used Merriman's _A History of Modern Europe_ as the textbook. Mokyr got into a debate with the author (via email) about some detail of steel production that was wrong. I still think about that when I'm writing: somewhere, a Mokyr might be reading so I better get it right.

Jeff Manuel @jeffmanuel.bsky.social · 1d

Delighted to see Joel Mokyr among the winners of the Nobel economics prize. Taking history classes with him was a highlight of my time as an undergraduate. We students would sit at a big seminar table and he'd pace around behind us, peppering us with very detailed questions.

Jeff Manuel @jeffmanuel.bsky.social · 2d

Something I think about from time to time is that in James’s novel—versus the film—the protagonist in Children of Men was a historian.

Jeff Manuel @jeffmanuel.bsky.social · 2d

Agreed. It’s what I like about social media and what’s kept me on it. But I think it’s worth asking some hard questions about the opportunity costs of all the time and energy we’ve spent on these platforms. If scholars had spent that building something else, would we be in a better place today?

Jeff Manuel @jeffmanuel.bsky.social · 2d

At the risk of technological determinism, it was the 2000s when the platforms—blogging, then social media—first allowed scholars to build a brand outside of disciplinary structures. No need to work through mentors or conferences or editors to build your little empire.

Jeff Manuel @jeffmanuel.bsky.social · 3d

Jean Twenge’s new book has some interesting points about talking with kids and parents about how and when to turn off the location tracking on phones, especially among college students (who are no longer kids!)

Jeff Manuel @jeffmanuel.bsky.social · 3d

“On October 6 I drove by the Society’s modest brick building, surrounded by yellow tape, and saw the moving truck, accompanied by two sheriffs—appropriate for a crime scene, the theft of the history that might have been written using the collection.”

Laura Belin @laurarbelin.bsky.social · 3d

Marian Wilson Kimber: It’s painful to realize the people in charge of Iowa’s history apparently have no idea how history works. If they did, they'd know there is no way to predict what parts of the collection will be of interest 5, 20, or 100 years from now. www.bleedingheartland.com/2025/10/10/t...

The theft of history

Marian Wilson Kimber: I have wondered if the box of women’s club programs that changed my life will end up in the dumpster.

www.bleedingheartland.com

Jeff Manuel @jeffmanuel.bsky.social · 4d

Full report here: www.transportenvironment.org/articles/cro...

Burning food for land-hungry biofuels is fuelling the climate crisis

For the first time ever, Cerulogy, on behalf of T&E, looks at the global biofuels landscape today and what a growing market will look like in 2030.

www.transportenvironment.org