Deregulating electricity prices and privatizing publicly owned power system assets has been an economic disaster in North America and elsewhere. Instead of the promised abundance of lower-priced power, states and provinces that have embraced deregulation and privatization are now experiencing astonishing price spikes and unexpected shortages. Taking us from the very beginnings of the electricity industry in the 1880s right up to the present day, Howard Hampton vividly recounts the dramatic political struggles between public and private power in both Canada and the United States, a moving story that links Ontario's Sir Adam Beck, founder of North America's largest public power system, with Franklin D. Roosevelt, who established the still-public New York Power Authority and Tennessee Valley Authority, and Cleveland Mayor Dennis Kucinich, who sacrificed his political career rather than sell his city's municipally owned electric utility.