Ted Nace
American writer
title: "Ted Nace" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["phillips-academy-alumni", "stanford-university-alumni", "university-of-california,-berkeley-alumni", "people-from-north-dakota", "writers-from-san-francisco", "living-people", "activists-from-the-san-francisco-bay-area", "american-non-fiction-environmental-writers", "american-publishers-(people)", "computer-science-writers", "american-book-publishers-(people)", "american-business-writers", "1956-births", "people-from-dickinson,-north-dakota", "american-male-non-fiction-writers"] description: "American writer" topic_path: "technology/computing" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nace" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary American writer ::
::data[format=table title="Infobox person"]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| name | Ted Nace |
| birth_date | |
| birth_place | California, United States |
| education | Phillips Academy |
| alma_mater | Stanford University |
| occupation | Environmental activist |
| Publisher | |
| Author | |
| years_active | 20 years (activist) |
| 10 years (publishing) | |
| notable_works | Climate Hope (book) |
| Gangs of America | |
| website | |
| :: |
| honorific_prefix = | name = Ted Nace | honorific_suffix = | image = | alt = | caption = | birth_date = | birth_place = California, United States | monuments = | other_names = | education = Phillips Academy | alma_mater = Stanford University | occupation = Environmental activist Publisher Author | years_active = 20 years (activist) 10 years (publishing) | employer = | organization = | known_for = | notable_works = Climate Hope (book) Gangs of America | style = | title = | movement = | opponents = | boards = | spouse = | partner = | children = | parents = | relatives = | callsign = | awards = | signature = | signature_alt = | signature_size = | website =
Ted Nace (born 1956) is an American writer, publisher, and environmentalist, known for his criticisms of corporate personhood and his support of a fossil fuel phase out. In 2009, he was described as "one of the amazing brains and strategists behind the anti-coal movement."{{cite news |author= Jeff Biggers |title= Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books For A Clean Energy Future |work= Huffington Post |quote= One of the amazing brains and strategists behind the anti-coal movement, CoalSwarm director Ted Nace has written a powerful chronicle of the grassroots movements to stop the construction of coal-fired plants, and halt mountaintop removal operations in Appalachia. |date= November 28, 2009 |url= http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/climate-hope-some-inspiri_b_372830.html |accessdate= November 21, 2010
He is the founder and executive director of Global Energy Monitor.{{cite news |title= The Canary in the Coal Mine |newspaper= USA Today |quote= Climate Hope: On the Front Lines of the Fight against Coal |date= June 27, 2010 |url= http://content.usatoday.com/topics/article/Places,+Geography/States,+Territories,+Provinces,+Islands/U.S.+States/North+Dakota/05tp8dZ5phduc/1 |accessdate= November 19, 2010
Early life
Ted Nace was born in California and grew up in Dickinson, North Dakota.{{cite news |author= Ted Nace |title= Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy |publisher= Berrett-Koehler Publishers |quote= While working for the U.S. Forest Service during high school, Ted Nace learned about the plans of several major corporations to develop coal strip mines and other energy projects near his hometown of Dickinson, North Dakota.... |year= 2010 |isbn= 978-1576752609 |url= https://archive.org/details/gangsofamericari00nace_0 |accessdate= November 19, 2010 |url-access= registration
Early career
In the 1970s, Nace worked for the Environmental Defense Fund and analyzed how to replace coal–fired power plants with alternative energy programs through computer simulations. He spent several years working in North Dakota at the Dakota Resource Council, a citizens' group concerned about the impacts of energy development on agriculture and rural communities.
Computer publishing
In the 1980s, Nace began working as an editor for the computer magazine PC World and as a columnist for Publish! and Computer Currents magazine.{{cite news |author= Monadnock Summer |title= Ted Nace: Confessions Of A Recovering Capitalist |publisher= New Hampshire Public Radio (nhpr) |quote= ... he worked as an editor at PC World magazine and as a columnist for Publish! and Computer Currents magazines. Together with Michael Gardner, he founded the computer book publishing company Peachpit Press in 1985 and served as publisher until 1996, ... In 2008 he founded CoalSwarm, a collaborative information clearinghouse on U.S. and international coal mines, ... In addition to several computer how-to books, ... |date= August 8, 2004 |url= http://www.nhpr.org/node/6718 |accessdate= November 19, 2010 |archive-date= February 10, 2010 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20100210165515/http://www.nhpr.org/node/6718 |url-status= dead
In 1985, he founded Peachpit Press with Michael Gardner, initially working out of his apartment in the San Francisco Bay Area. He wrote numerous how–to books on computer–related subjects. At the time, Elaine Weinmann, the computer writer, described his publishing approach as user-friendly and innovative.{{cite news |author= Elaine Weinmann, Peter Lourekas |title= Photoshop CS for Windows and Macintosh |publisher= Peachpit Press |quote= The Story behind the book ... Sometime in the mid-'80s, a smart guy in Berkeley, California, by the name of Ted Nace got a brainstorm. He decided to start up a computer book publishing company, which he called Peachpit Press. ... The books he published were innovative and user-friendly and offered a fresh approach to learning computer graphics. (page iii) (Ted let authors typeset and illustrate their own books – with Ted's feedback) ... in 1996, Ted handed the baton to successor Nancy Aldrich-Ruenzel ... |year= 2004 |isbn= 9780321213532 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=pCCmjQ0vVMIC&pg=PR3 |accessdate= November 19, 2010
As the company grew in size and sales, it published books about Mac computers and became a leader in books about digital graphics, with a MacBible series, Real World series, and Visual QuickStart (VQS) series. Peachpit published most of the popular manuals of style by writer Robin Williams, such as The Mac is Not a Typewriter and the Little Mac Book.
In 1994, Nace sold Peachpit to Pearson plc and he left the company in 1996.{{cite news |author= Alan T. Saracevic (reviewer) |title= 'Gangs of America' (book review) Insightful books put ubiquitous corporations under a microscope – Authors, film study powerful firms and how they got that way |newspaper= San Francisco Chronicle |quote= ... Nace grew the company quickly. His lawyer suggested incorporating and he did. He even went on to sell the firm to a multinational company, Pearson Ltd., while remaining in charge of his imprint. |date= May 30, 2004 |url= https://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/2004-05-30/business/17427311_1_corporation-noam-chomsky-profit-and-power/3 |access-date= December 4, 2010
Writing
In the 1980s, Nace began writing freelance essays, including regular contributions to Orion Magazine.{{cite magazine |author= Ted Nace |title= Breadbasket of Democracy |magazine= Orion Magazine |quote= IN THE NEW RED-BLUE LEXICON of American politics, the Red River Valley of North Dakota seems aptly named. This is football-on-Friday-night country, where Clear Channel Radio sets the tone, and patriotic themes blend smoothly with corporate ones. |date= May 2006 |url= http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/171/ |accessdate= November 19, 2010 |title= Ted Nace |magazine= Orion Magazine |quote= Ted Nace, founder of Peachpit Press, the world's leading publisher of books on digital graphics, is the author of Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy. |date= November 19, 2010 |url= http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/mag/contributor/507/ |accessdate= November 19, 2010 |archive-date= January 2, 2011 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110102153831/http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/mag/contributor/507/ |url-status= dead |author= Ted Nace |title= Stopping Coal in Its Tracks: Loosely affiliated activists draw a hard line – and hold it |magazine= Orion Magazine |quote= ... LaPlaca returned home and read the latest messages posted on the No New Coal Plants e-mail list, an Internet watering hole initiated in April 2006 by Philadelphia organizer Mike Ewall. |date= January–February 2008 |url= http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/506 |accessdate= November 21, 2010 ::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/General_Motors_Building.JPG" caption="Nace has criticized corporations such as [[General Motors]] for having too much political influence. GM headquarters in [[New York City]]."] ::
After he left Peachpit, his work increasingly focused on the relation between corporations and democracy in America. He reflected on his own career as a business owner:
''Gangs of America''
His book Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy (2003) argued that corporations have deleterious effects on society and the economy. According to Nace, the specious character of corporation's quasi-legal enablements undermine American democracy. He used about his own experiences watching a coal mine develop in North Dakota to explain his concerns with corporate power:
|author= Ted Nace |title= Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy |publisher= Berrett-Koehler Publishers |quote= "A surprising and welcome achievement...provocative and entertaining." (Ted Nace:) Business does tend to get its way, acting by means of a nebulous force known as "corporate power" that drives much of what happens in both the public and private spheres." page 2 ... |year= 2003 |isbn= 9781576753194 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=WHD402m6ZVwC&q=%22ted+nace%22+peachpit |accessdate= 2010-11-19
Nace writes that as the corporate institution developed it got "too much power" in the United States. In an interview, he explained that the modern corporation was a structure that "gelled about a century ago", and that it is a "sort of life form" which has "persistence, metabolism, reproduction, adaptation". He has claimed that the 1886 Supreme Court decision of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad was an example of the "most well known" bad decisions that has granted corporations the same rights as people.
He has criticized the role that business plays in shaping political policy in the last few decades.
::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Grand_Junction_Trip_92007_098.JPG" caption="Castle Gate Power Plant]] in [[Utah]]."] ::
A New York Times critic found Nace's Gangs of America to be well-researched and made a compelling case that corporations have too much political power, but the reviewer faulted Nace for ignoring the benefit to American shareholders and for slighting "the contributions the corporate form has made to average Americans' prosperity."{{cite magazine |title= Book Review: Gangs of America by Ted Nace |magazine= The New York Times Book Review |date= September 14, 2003 |url= http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/book_review/gangs_america_nace.html |accessdate= November 19, 2010 |author= Alan T. Saracevic (reviewer) |title= Insightful books put ubiquitous corporations under a microscope – Authors, film study powerful firms and how they got that way |newspaper= San Francisco Chronicle |quote= Nace, again, is an obvious lefty with a singular point of view: Corporations have evolved to an abusive state of being. He came to that conclusion in a legitimate way: He is the founder of a corporation. |date= May 30, 2004 |url= https://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/2004-05-30/business/17427311_1_corporation-noam-chomsky-profit-and-power/3 |access-date= December 4, 2010
''Climate Hope''
Nace's second book, Climate Hope: On the Front Lines of the Fight Against Coal (2010) is a first-person chronicle of the anti–coal movement. Tina Gerhardt, the environmental journalist, lauded the book and described its climate agenda as "do-able".
Environmental activism
In the mid-2000s, Nace turned his focus to anti-coal activism. He became active in efforts to block the development and use of coal power plants in the United States through sit–ins at coal mines and banks.{{cite news |author= Ted Nace |title= Climate Hope: On the Front Lines of the Fight Against Coal |publisher= Berrett-Koehler Publishers |quote= Author: Ted Nace is the founder of CoalSwarm (coalswarm.org) and the author of Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy (Berrett-Koehler, 2003, 2005). |year= 2003 |url= http://coalswarm.typepad.com/coalswarm/climatehope.html |accessdate= November 21, 2010
|author= Christine Shearer and Ted Nace |title= The Coal War: Interview with Climate Hope Author Ted Nace |publisher= Left Eye on Books |quote= From a climate perspective, coal is far and away ... |date= November 21, 2010 |url= http://www.lefteyeonbooks.com/2010/08/the-coal-war-interview-with-climate-hope-author-ted-nace/ |accessdate= 2010-11-21 He was described in the Huffington Post as "one of the amazing brains and strategists behind the anti-coal movement."{{cite news |author= Jeff Biggers |title= Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books For A Clean Energy Future |work= Huffington Post |quote= One of the amazing brains and strategists behind the anti-coal movement, CoalSwarm director Ted Nace has written a powerful chronicle of the grassroots movements to stop the construction of coal-fired plants, and halt mountaintop removal operations in Appalachia. |date= November 28, 2009 |url= http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/climate-hope-some-inspiri_b_372830.html |accessdate= November 21, 2010
Global Energy Monitor
In 2007, Nace founded CoalSwarm, a website affiliated with Earth Island Institute, to share information similar to Wikipedia and Citizendium, but focused on coal. In 2009, Coalswarm started a tracker database of global coal-fired power stations that became "widely respected" by academic researchers, media outlets, and governments. In 2018, Coalswarm changed its name to Global Energy Monitor and became an independent organization, expanding coverage to include natural gas pipelines, steel plants, coal mines, and other energy infrastructures.{{cite news |title= About the CoalSwarm wiki |publisher= coalSwarm |quote= Begun in early 2008, the CoalSwarm wiki is a joint project between CoalSwarm and the Center for Media and Democracy, a Madison, Wisconsin-based media watchdog group. Consisting of over 4,000 articles, the CoalSwarm wiki is housed inside CMD's 70,000-entry SourceWatch wiki. |year= 2008 |url= http://coalswarm.typepad.com/coalswarm/ |accessdate= November 21, 2010 |title= Advisors, Staff, and Wiki Reporter Network |publisher= CoalSwarm |quote= Ted Nace, director |year= 2010 |url= http://coalswarm.typepad.com/coalswarm/advisers.html |accessdate= November 21, 2010
Publications
Books
- Climate Hope: On the Front Lines of the Fight Against Coal, by Ted Nace, 2010. , 288 pages, paperback.
- Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy by Ted Nace, 2003.
Computer publishing
- LaserJet Unlimited, by Ted Nace and Michael Gardner, 1996.{{cite news |author= United States Patent 5583978 |title= Apparatuses and methods for creating and using portable fonted texts with embedded automatically-created font descriptions |publisher= free patents online |quote= see references |year= 1996 |url= http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5583978.html |accessdate= November 21, 2010
- Desktop Publishing Secrets by Robert C. Eckhardt, Ted Nace, Bob Weibel, October 1991, Peachpit Press{{cite news |title= Books by Ted Nace |publisher= ACM Digital Library |date= November 21, 2010 |url= http://portal.acm.org/author_page.cfm?id=81100662837&coll=DL&dl=ACM&trk=0&cfid=112014268&cftoken=55013818 |accessdate= November 21, 2010
- Ventura Tips and Tricks, 3rd edition, by Ted Nace, Daniel Will-Harris, September 1990, Peachpit Press
- Desktop publishing skills: a primer for typesetting with computer and laser printer, by James Felici, Ted Nace, May 1987, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc.
References
References
- Gerhardt, Tina. (June 27, 2010). "Climate Hope: On the Front Lines of the Fight against Coal". [[Huffington Post]].
- (2 March 2019). "The race to build a better battery". RN.
- Gerhardt, Tina. (June 27, 2010). "The Canary in the Coal Mine: Stopping Climate Change – Review of Ted Nace's ''Climate Hope''". [[Huffington Post]].
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