"A Laissez-Faire Market in Large-Scale Power Generation Won't Work"

"The story briskly moves to modern times, sketching out the state's incompetent attempt at electric market deregulation at the turn of the new millennium. Politicians and regulators were played for chumps by Wall Street sharpies, and PG&E customers suffered rolling blackouts as the not-quite-free market failed to provide a reliable supply of electricity. 'It was arguably one of the most complicated heists ever undertaken in California,' Blunt writes."

Russ Mitchell at the Los Angeles Times reviews Katherine Blunt's California Burning: The Fall of Pacific Gas and Electric—and What It Means for America's Power Grid.

And the Times runs an excerpt from Blunt's book.