Edison Inventing the Century - Hardcover

Baldwin, Neil

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786860413 ISBN 13: 9780786860418

Publisher: Hyperion Books, 1995

Synopsis

Neil Baldwin's Edison: Inventing the Century is the first biography of one of the seminal figures in our history to examine him as both myth and man, assessing his remarkable accomplishments while taking thorough measure of the paradoxes of his character. Drawing upon unprecedented access to Edison family papers and years of research at the Edison corporate archives, Baldwin offers a revealing portrait of the inventor, in which we discover a man whose life epitomized the American dream as fully as he became a victim of its darker side. From his years as a fragile boy hawking newspapers on trains throughout the Midwest to his arrival in New York City as an itinerant telegrapher seeking his fortune; from his development of the light bulb to his spectacular electrification of lower Manhattan; from his struggles to create the phonograph and motion picture and bring them to market to his obsessive search for a source of natural rubber even as he was dying, Edison: Inventing the Century is an enthralling chronicle of the most revered figure of his time.
Alongside the esteemed scientist stands the fiercely self-aggrandizing manufacturer of his own myth; the man possessed by a virtually incessant flow of ideas, who often fights brutally to protect those ideas in the marketplace; the man who publicly preaches the values of home life while his own family is plagued by clinical depression and alcoholism, and while his six neglected, aimless children from two marriages try to step from his massive shadow, yet prove, almost inevitably, to be a disappointment.

About this title

Review

"Baldwin has demythologized the man and left the genius bigger than life."-David Gates, "Newsweek"

"Edison has been the subject of many earlier biographical studies, yet Mr. Baldwin sees more clearly than the rest how Edison's life was his greatest invention."-G. Pascal Zachary, "Wall Street Journal"

"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."--Roger Rosenblatt--Roger Rosenblatt

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. --Roger Rosenblatt"

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."

Edition details

• Publisher: Hyperion Books
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0786860413
• ISBN 13: 9780786860418
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1