Leah Stokes investigates why American states have made so little progress on renewable energy despite widespread public support for clean electricity. Through detailed case studies of Kansas, Texas, Ohio, and Arizona, she traces how electric utilities have systematically weakened or reversed renewable energy policies through lobbying, campaign contributions, and manipulation of regulatory processes. Stokes argues that policy feedback effects—how policies reshape political power—explain more than public opinion or party ideology. When renewable energy policies create new constituencies (solar installers, wind farmers), utilities respond by channeling money to politicians willing to roll back mandates. The book documents specific mechanisms: how utilities wrote model legislation that gutted renewable portfolio standards, how they funded astroturf campaigns to defeat solar net metering, how revolving doors between industry and regulatory bodies captured oversight. Stokes, a political scientist who worked on climate policy in Congress, combines quantitative analysis with interviews and document review to build her cases. The book is damning about how private interests have blocked clean energy transitions that majorities support, but also offers lessons about policy design that might prove more durable. Readers interested in climate policy, energy politics, or how corporate power operates in American democracy will find rigorous analysis of a crucial policy failure.