Edison

"The electric light is the light of the future- and it will be my light, unless some other fellow gets up a better one." - Thomas A. EdisonThe author of lives of artist Man Ray and poet William Carlos Williams, Neil Baldwin chose to devote his third biography to a practical-minded genius: Thomas Alva Edison, one of America's most venerated icons. Beginning with the history of Edison's ancestors in the new world, this thick, 500-page volume has its subject come to life on page 17, and chronicles his prodigious accomplishments until his death in 1931, with numerous highlights on his two wives (the first of whom, Mary Stilwell, died at 29), children and in-laws.The tone of the book is generally sympathetic, though Baldwin deliberately attempts to eschew the hero-worshiping of some earlier works in order to achieve a more "balanced" and sober view of the man. A lot of stress is laid on the consequences of Edison's incredible working habits on his family life and the emotional development of his children, and one cannot help thinking that the author blames him for his single-minded devotion to the pursuit of technological progress. Indeed, the metaphors used to describe Edison's industriousness and concentration are often borrowed from the vocabulary of pathology: he is presented as a "workaholic" rather than a hard worker, with "obsessions" rather than ambitions or passions. Even the division of labour in Edison's West Orange research center, says Baldwin, "physically epitomizes the schisms in Edison's psyche".The book is not overladen with technical minutiae, as the author seems to be more attracted to period detail than to hardware. His understanding of the science underlying Edison's experiments and theorizing did not strike me as particularly deep, anyway. Quoting Edison's speculations about the origin of the solar system, for instance, Baldwin exclaims that he was "tantalizingly close to the fringe of a Big Bang theory". Of course, one should not demand too much from a PhD in Modern American Poetry.The author's political philosophy is not too intrusive, but it annoyingly crops up at some points. For instance, he says that the great industrialists of the late nineteenth century might as well be called robber barons, "depending on which side of the dialectic is preferred". His presentation of Edward Bellamy's utopian novel, *Looking Backwards*, as part of his attempt to convey the intellectual flavour of the age, is extremely positive: Bellamy's society is described as "a place of abolished inequities and cultural efficiency, not wasteful production and underconsumption" where "the venerated 'unremitting toil' so characteristic of the competitive, unorganized and antagonistic 1880s would be supplanted by a commitment to equal sharing of the nation's wealth". This is more than slightly disturbing, considering that what Bellamy had drawn was a communist blueprint for America (see for instance Clarence Carson's *Flight from Reality* for an interestin

Background into this important American figure in our century. So much of what we now have came from this man. His connections to Ford and the whole electric industry are monumental. This book describes the unfolding of this giant's life in witty, easy-to-read style. His emphasis on all the elements of the man's life without too much detail of the technical, kept me captivated.

Great representation of ideas. Reflects Edison as "the" personality of the century. Genius as he was, all his geniosity is brought out in the creation. Great work by Baldwin.