Natural Gas & Electric Power in Nontechnical Language (Pennwell Nontechnical Series)

Rating:
Summary: Good Introduction to Natural Gas and Power Generation
Review: Chambers covers a lot of material in enough detail to promote an understanding of the broad issues involved in natural gas and its relation to an increasingly deregulated electric power market -- but not in so much detail that a reader new to the subject will be lost and confused. Certain topics are treated a bit too roughly, a good example being the discussion of deregulation, which skims the surface of the government's complicity in impeding the NG industry's progress and doesn't frame the issues as clearly as it could. The book's editing is not the best; there are spelling and grammar errors, and some of the graphics are unclear. Chambers' writing, however, is generally concise and lucid, and her topics are on target. The glossary is helpful. Altogether a book that does what it seems intended to do. Now, if Pennwell could just sharpen the editing and bring the price down a bit. . .

Rating:
Summary: Marginally acceptable for non-technical people, else, poor.
Review: Ms. Chambers, the author, was at Pennwell Publishing (natural gas & power industry publisher) at the time of this book's publication. By formal training, she's a journalist.

This book, as I read it, appeared to me to be a mosiac of just snippets and facts that may have been accreted over her publishing career, with perhaps, a most limited appreciation, true feel and understanding of the natural gas and power industry. Translation: not that there has to be a "passion" about this, or any industry, but if she does harbor one, as a genuine interest and concern, regrettably, it did not come across in this book.

My interpretation is as an engineer. But still, and even without such a degree of discerning scrutiny, the author could
have been provided much better checks to copy before it was published. The book's flow is somewhat checkered: It could have been assembled much better with both logic, how it all fits together, full comprehensive scope, and not least - data and charts given. When we look at graphs without telling us what the vertical axis is (no units, but dimensionless numbers of what?), what are we looking at?

For the non-techie, you may get something out of this book. For those that are really not that right-hemisphere and like specifics, keep away; you'll end up somewhat dizzy.

Shame, I expected lots more and it's still a very rich subject area/topic for the right work to pull it all together.