Energy security in the United States may be an achievable goal for the first time in nearly 40 years. Credit largely goes to the shale boom; its epicenters are in places like Texas, Pennsylvania and North Dakota, not Washington, D.C. The economic benefits — jobs, royalty and tax revenues and lower natural gas prices — reverberate nationwide. Forget Occupy Wall Street: This is a real revolution.

Shale is the most common sedimentary rock, and certainly the one with the least glamorous pedigree. Shale started as mud, deposited in a lagoon, a swamp or the deep ocean.