Last night I did a reading at Politics and Prose , one of the last great independent booksellers and one of the last official stops on my book tour. It was bittersweet -- a great turnout, spirited audience, lots of love in the air, and a culmination of the wild experience I've had carrying the message of Power Trip to audiences in Ohio, Texas, Tennessee, New York, Illinois, California, Colorado, Washington State, Washington D.C. Audiences of every stripe--politically charged, apolitical, curious, circumspect, deep-green, anti-green, ego-bruising, life-affirming. I've learned perhaps as much about our energy landscape from engaging with these audiences in the past two months in the two years I spent researching and writing the book. Weirdly I found the friendliest audiences in the least obvious locales-- Texas, Ohio, Tennessee. The most skeptical and aloof were in places like uber-green Seattle. I learned that people come to this topic with clear expectations of what they'll hear -- gloom, judgment, complaint. I found that humor, optimism, humility could open minds and elicit sometimes effusive responses. Environmental justice leader Van Jones has often said: Martin Luther King Jr. didn't build a movement on "I have a complaint!"  My ability to persuade audiences seemed to lie in the authenticity of my optimism, and the stories and evidence I used to bear it out. But then there were those audiences who only wanted to hear complaints, and those tended to be the audiences where the Power Trip message fell flat.