Synopses & Reviews
The genius of America's most prolific inventor, Thomas Edison, is widely acknowledged, and Edison himself has become an almost mythic figure. But how much do we really know about the man who considered deriving rubber from a goldenrod plant as opposed to the mastermind who gave us electric light? In this fascinating biography, Neil Baldwin gives us a complex portrait of the inventor himself-both myth and man-and a multifaceted account of the intellectual climate of the country he worked in and irrevocably changed.
Review
“Baldwin has demythologized the man and left the genius bigger than life.”—David Gates, Newsweek
Review
“Edison has been the subject of many earlier biographical studies, yet Mr. Baldwin sees more clearly than the rest how Edisons life was his greatest invention.”—G. Pascal Zachary, Wall Street Journal
Review
“In this scrupulously detailed, thoroughly captivating biography, Neil Baldwin presents America in a man—as strange, obsessed, and tangled and brilliant as the age he literally illuminated. After reading Edison, you wonder how it is possible to understand the country without him.”
Description
Includes bibliographical references and index.
About the Author
Neil Baldwin is an executive director of the National Book Foundation and coeditor of
The Writing Life. He is the author of critically acclaimed biographies of William Carlos Williams and Man Ray, as well as
Legends of the Plumed Serpent: Biography of a Mexican God.