The idea that humanity progresses through energy transitions — from wood to coal, coal to oil, oil to renewables — is among the most widely accepted narratives about modern history, and Jean-Baptiste Fressoz argues it is fundamentally wrong. A historian of science and the environment at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris, Fressoz marshals two centuries of evidence to show that no energy source has ever actually replaced another. Instead, each new source has been added on top of existing ones, with total energy consumption growing continuously. The world burns more wood today than it did in the nineteenth century. Coal consumption has not declined since the rise of oil; it has increased. Oil consumption continued to grow through the nuclear age and into the era of solar and wind power. Fressoz traces how the concept of energy transition was itself constructed — partly by industries seeking to present fossil fuel use as a temporary historical phase that would naturally give way to cleaner alternatives. He shows how this narrative has functioned as a form of political reassurance, allowing governments and corporations to promise future transformation while presiding over ever-increasing extraction. The book draws on detailed case studies from industrial history, including the relationship between coal and steam power, the electrification of factories, and the petrochemical revolution, to demonstrate that energy systems are far stickier than transition narratives suggest. The implications for climate policy are stark: if transitions do not happen naturally, then decarbonization will require deliberate, unprecedented political intervention rather than the organic market forces that transition optimists invoke.