"I had heard about Biodiesel from my sister, and she had taken a bunch of diesel cars and actually converted them so you could put straight vegetable oil into them and just go to like the back of a restaurant and collect their used vegetable oil, filter it and put it in your car. So that's how I found out about it, and then probably in the last couple of years I have a bunch of friends who started using biodiesel, too.

Biodiesel, the subtitle is Growing a New Energy Economy, and in it the author covers everything -- the basics from what is biodiesel, how is it made, where is it produced. He kind of spans all the different countries and the politics around production of biodiesel versus petroleum diesel and different energy sources.

It really reads like a long, well-researched magazine article. I lend the book to my mom, who had almost no previous knowledge other than she knew that my sister and I both drove these weird cars that you could run on vegetable oil, and she got really into it. She did have a few questions along the way, but I think it's fairly accessible. Some of it gets a little bit technical, but there's a glossary in the back and there's different ways that he repeats himself or explains things so that you can understand it.

So probably anybody interested in global warming or just wanting to know what biodiesel is or know more about diesel cars would be interested in the book. It was written a few years ago, so just the way the industry is, it's already a little bit outdated because things have been advancing so fast with the development of biodiesel; but it's really meticulously footnoted and you can't really find fault with the author for any of his research. I would give it a four out of five, probably just because I would have liked a little bit more anecdotes just to make the book a little more personable; but in terms of information, there's tons of information in it."

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