Description: High Tension is the story of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's battle against the "Power Trust," an elaborate Wall Street-controlled web of holding companies, to electrify all of America--even when the corrupt captains of the industry and their cronies (led by a formidable and honest champion, Wendell Willkie, whose role in the battle propelled him to a presidential bid to unseat Roosevelt in 1940) cried that running lines to rural areas would not be profitable and that in a free market there would simply have to be a divide between the electricity haves and have-nots.
FDR knew better. And in this story of shrewd political maneuvering, controversial legislation, New Deal government organizations like the Tennessee Valley Authority, the packing of Federal courts, towering business figures, greedy villains, and the crying needs of farmers and other rural citizens desperate for services critical to their daily lives John A. Riggs has chronicled democracy's greatest balancing act of government intervention with private market forces. Here is the tale of how FDR's efforts brought affordable electricity to all Americans, powered the industrial might that won World War II, and established a model for public-private solutions today in areas such as transportation infrastructure, broadband, and health care.Brief description: John A. Riggs is a Senior Fellow at the Aspen Institute, where he directed its Program on Energy and Environment from 1995 to 2006. He was principal deputy assistant secretary and then acting assistant secretary for policy and international affairs at the US Department of Energy from 1993 to 1995. Previously he served for twenty years on the staff of the US Congress, including thirteen years as staff director of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power. He also served in Vietnam and Brazil with the Agency for International Development (1966-72) and taught energy policy at the University of Pennsylvania. John has a BA in history from Swarthmore College and a master's in public policy from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University.