George Eastman: A Biography - Hardcover

Brayer, Elizabeth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1580462472 ISBN 13: 9781580462471

Publisher: University of Rochester Press, 2006

Synopsis

Now back in print, this life of George Eastman is the first biography since 1930 of the man who transformed the world of photography. In this revealing and informative work, Brayer shows us how such key innovations as roll film and the light, hand-held camera helped the Eastman Kodak Company dominate the world market. More importantly, Brayer draws a vivid portrait of the man behind the money. Eastman worked hard at staying out of the limelight and even insisted that his donations be kept anonymous, prompting the Boston Globe to call him "America's most modest and least-known millionaire."

Despite his retirement in 1925, Eastman showed little sign of slowing down. Making money had been interesting, but putting money to work became more so. In the 1920s he designed a special camera for use in orthodontia and established elaborate dental clinics for needy children around the world. He oversaw the building of the Eastman theatre and the Eastman School of Music. His contributions built a new campus for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a new medical school for the University of Rochester. Finally, he became the largest contributor to the education of African Americans during the 1920s and the Tuskegee Institute's most important benefactor.

Elizabeth Brayer lives in Rochester, NY. For the past 18 years she has served on both the George Eastman Legacy and the Landscape committees at the George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film. She writes about the history of central and Western New York State. George Eastman: A Biography was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1996.

About this title

Review:

Brayer's is a balanced picture of one of the modern era's seminal industrial figures; she has been able, for the first time, to draw on a wide range of sources, including personal papers and corporate records. --TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

Brayer's admirably detailed biography is a fine work of reference. Personalities, social history, science: all are meticulously documented. George Eastman is a very welcome addition to one's biography shelves. --THE LITERARY REVIEW, BALTIMORE

A history of technological revolution in the photographic medium and the emergence of "big business" via the Kodak empire...also a detail-rich look at turn-of-the-century central New York. --LIBRARY JOURNAL

Brayer has written a candid, fact-crammed life of the first camera-and-film tycoon. --PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY

Meticulously researched and clearly written, this book is unlikely to be rivaled and should be recognized as the standard work on the subject. Elizabeth Brayer should be congratulated on a magnificent achievement. A fitting tribute to one of the formative figures of modern times. --BOOKSHELF

Brayer's big book triumphantly mines Eastman's correspondence and reports of those who knew him well. It is a complex and frequently sparkling story of invention, industrial growth in a changing America, personally managed philanthropy, and a little-known, intriguingly complex personality. --THE AMERICAN ENTERPRISE

The astute selection of letters and quotations from more than 20,000 records is a signal achievement. This biography is a fine window on the life of a most unusually talented, interesting, and deeply thoughtful man. --JOURNAL OF IMAGING SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

From the Author:

Quotes from reviews of my book
I wish to commend the following reviews of my book (brief excerpts supplied) to prospective readers. · Fiona Adams, third grade, Mendon Center Elementary School, Pittsford, NY, letter to author, 25 November 1996: "Thank you for reading the small version of George Eastmans life. I thought it was funny when the book said, "A big flood came over Rochester and George thought it was fun to paddle through the streets on a row boat!" · Katie Calhoun, editor Audacity magazine, in letter to author, 2/20/97: "Last year I read with interest your biography of George Eastman. I found it smart, fluent, and utterly absorbing." · Humphrey Carpenter, "Make way for the Kodak Kid," Sunday Times (UK) 23 June 96: "Let’s imagine that this vast book has—appropriately for its subject—metamorphosed into a slim photograph album.... In the first photo (1880) a narrow-faced young man lies snoring in a hammock....The seventh and final snapshot (1932) shows George Eastman on his deathbed....Pay close attention, and you will see what Elizabeth Brayer has been waiting to spring on her readers." · Susan Elkin, " He Liked Cows Too," Literary Review, 1 May 1996, p. 60: "Elizabeth Brayer is the first to write a full-length, properly researched biography of the father of modern photography, with all its twentieth-century implications.... My favorite of his self-indulgences is the giant pipe organ." · George M. C. Fisher in "Foreword to Eastman biography": "Elizabeth Brayer shows how George Eastman applied his 19th-century self-reliance to an age suddenly thriving with invention, mass production, and free markets. And she leads us to see how technology came to affect daily life in ways that continue today." http://www.kodak.com/aboutKodak/kodakHistory/foreword.shtml · Colin Ford, "Pioneers bought into focus," The Times Higher Education Supplement, 2 August 1996, p. 23: "Brayer’s strength is her clear revelation that Eastman’s biggest contribution to photography was not so much chemical or technical, but his realisation that the future of the medium lay with amateurs, not professionals....Brayer’s painstaking biography (the first since Eastman’s death) comes into its own in the years after the most famous part of his story.... Wat an influence he has had on all our lives!" · Sören Gunnarsson in Forum: The Magazine for Hasselblad Photographers, p. 39: "For some time there has been a need for a detailed biography of George Eastman.... Now it has been written... The style is light and it is frequently entertaining to read." · Leslie Hannah, "The Kodak king" in TLS: The Times Literary Supplement, 24 May 1996 : "Brayer’s affectionate, though critical, biography surveys a bourgeois existence which effortlessly spanned continents, eclectically dabbled in picture-collecting, big game hunting, eugenics, politics, philanthropy, billiards, and travel... The chapter on how a rich American dealt with his architects is one of Brayer’s best." · Collin Harding in Photographica World, No. 79, Dec. 1996, p. 42: "There has long been a need for an impartial and properly researched biography of one of the key figures in the history of photography and in the cultural and business history of our century. This need has now been filled by Elizabeth Brayer’s eagerly-awaited work..." · Louis R. Harlan, "Recommended Reading," Key Reporter, Winter 1997, p.13: "George Eastman...has long deserved a well-researched biography that could explain photographic technology to lay readers, evaluate Eastman’s business practices; give and account of Eastman’s thoughful philanthropic contributions...; and explain his decisive influence on countless lives...." The rich social and family life of this bachelor genius is fully and interestingly presented." · Ralph Hollenbeck, King Features Syndicate, 1996: "Brayer has performed a major service in resurrecting a historic figure in the mold of Ford, Marconi, the Wright Brothers, Edison....This major study mirrors its subjects—understated yet well-organized and thorough." · Liz Jobey, "Snapshot of the push-button age" in The Guardian, 24 May 96: "The constant fear of industrial sabotage is a reminder of how crowded the late 19th century was with inventions—many of them from amateurs like Eastman, whose alchemy began at night, in his home-laboratory, after a day at the bank." · Robert Koch: The American Enterprise, Sept/Oct 1996, p.80. · Joseph Losos, "Eastman proved pioneering can pay," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Everyday Magazine, 11 Aug 1996: "George Eastman can be compared appropriately to Bill Gates. Both men possessed a knack for technical innovation and a sure sense of converting arcane science into popular products. Eastman throughout his life, like Gates today, gained immense fame without giving up privacy....These technological hotshots proved to be financial geniuses as well... The term "nerd" was designed for such men, and, as Elizabeth Brayer deftly demonstrates, that is the right word for Eastman... This well-written book should be in the library of anyone who cherishes American financial and social history." · Eugene Marino, "Eastman portrait captures a canny, tough customer," Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, NY, 14 April 1996: "The image that glares out from the cover of Elizabeth Brayer’s biography isn’t the kindly, patrician, bespectacled, official portrait...that we’ve become accustomed to. It’s an arresting image of Eastman in his prime... a bare-knuckled brawler with something to prove..., someone only the most courageous or foolhardy would attempt to cross...Brayer shows us the pugnacious young entrepreneur, outsmarting his competitors, battling them in court or simply gobbling them up....a wonderful achievement. · Norris D. McWhirter, Founder Editor Guiness Book of World Records, 1954-1986, in a letter to the author, 2 March 1997: "I lit upon your magnificent biography of George Eastman—what a marvellous accomplishment...a tour de force." · Ron Netsky, "Eastman bio brings his legacy to life" in City, Rochester’s Alternative Newsweekly, 23 May 1996: "One of the most refreshing aspects of Brayer’s writing is her refusal to journey into the area of psychological conjecture. She acknowledges that Eastman, who never married and was endlessly devoted to his mother, offered a fat Freudian target... After reading the book, one certainly has a better understanding of the man. Even his suicide seems inevitable." · Publishers Weekly (starred review): "Brayer’s biography...captures the expansive if callous period in American business when such fortunes were made." · Louis Rosenblum in The Journal of Imaging Science and Technology, July/August 1996, v. 40, n. 4: "In pulling aside the curtains of secrecy that have hidden much of the technical, financial, managerial, philanthropic and personal life of George Eastman, this biography does not attempt to hide his errors....The astute selection ...from more than 200,00 records is a signal achievement...a fine window on the life of a most unusually talented and deeply thoughtful man. Brayer’s keen sense of humor is revealed ...The passages that lead a reader to pause and chuckle are numerous." · Merle Rubin, "A Life Story Well Told is a Story Worth Reading," The Christian Science Monitor, 29 Aug 1996 :"It tells readers so much about so many aspects of his active and busy life, that the impression of his shy yet dynamic personality comes across, alond with a genuine appreciation of his accomplishments as inventor, entrepreneur, employer, and one of the great American philanthropists." · Curt Smith, commentator WXXI AM 1370 radio, 2/26/97: "Have I got a book for you! It’s George Eastman by Elizabeth Brayer. I picked it up last week and have barely put it down. Above all, it’s the story of a time, the 1880s to 1930s, and how it affects our time. Reading it is like a carrousel of Ripley’s Believe it or Not." · Martin Morse Wooster, "America’s Unknown

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Rochester Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1580462472
• ISBN 13: 9781580462471
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 702