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Title: Edison: A Life of Invention by Paul Israel ISBN: 0-471-36270-0 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 11 February, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.92 (12 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: superb scholarly and technical treatment
Comment: I was given this book for a writing project and dutifully plowed through it over the Christmas holidays. Overall, I must say that it was an absolutely excellent holiday book as well as chock full of useful ideas for my scholarly purposes. This is an extremely difficult balance to strike and Israel has done it better than I thought possible - I was prepared for a long dry slog and instead found a great and exciting story.
Edison, Israel argues, was not just a lone little-educated tinkerer of genius as he is often portrayed, but the creator of the prototype for the modern corporate research lab - he knew how to find talent, how to organize it to get the most out of people, and how to beat the competition by both speed and in the creation of entire new systems of technology. He also knew how to manipulate the media and build on his fame, creating a myth to which he had to live up. That being said, he had a pitch-perfect intuitive sense not only of potential new markets, but of how to create technical solutions to exploit them. He learned from his failures and strove to apply his less-successful inventions elsewhere, often to great effect. Taken together, this was true business genius and Israel explains it all succinctly, including the exposure of Edison's many weaknesses in management and his financial affairs and his many flops (such as the mining experiments that nearly bankrupted him). Furthermore, the basics of his major inventions - improvements to the telegraph and telephone, the light bulb, commerical electricity generation systems, to mention a few - are covered with competence, always with an eye to the management of it all and what it took, all of which are of great use. This adds up to a masterpiece of scholarship and popular writing in my view, crossing a plethora of disciplines in very readable prose and at a good pace of storytelling.
However, there are many things that make this a challenging read and in some ways disappointing. Even though I know a lot about science and engineering from my own writing, I found the many passages explaining the nuts and bolts of his inventions hard to follow and ultimately rather dry. If the reader is not interested in these highly technical details, he can skim them without losing the narrative thread. Moreover, Edison as a person does not always come thru, though really he was his work and not much else. You also do not learn much about the fate of his enterprises or even his personal financial fortune after his death, which is also a part of his legacy that should be explored. Finally, Israel addresses somewhat rarified questions in the concluding chapter regarding whether Edison was a "scientist" and how industrial research was changing (developing specialties that required far more education than inventors of Edison's "heroic invention" epoch) to make the emergence of generalist, self-taught inventors like him far more difficult and with limited horizons; while I enjoyed this a great deal, it is of limited interest to those who were never steeped in "science policy."
All in all, highest recommendation. It is a great achievement and will stand as one of the definitive biographies of this great and difficult man.
Rating: 2
Summary: Don't look for inspiration in this dry book
Comment: I read this book hoping to really examine what made Edison tick and how was he so successful. I was largely disappointed. Whereas I do not expect an author to give a one sided story, Mr. Israel seems like he almost wants to break Edison down and tell the reader Edison wasn't so great after all. There was no insight into his genius or inspiration. The book seems to get caught up in timelines and specifics about inventions - the when and where - and little about Edison himself. While I am sure Edison was human and had his faults, it seems that Mr. Israel wanted to focus on his faults, failures and shortcomings. It was almost as if he took the approach "You thought Edison was so great, well let me tell you a thing or two about him that you didn't know." Even when he compliments Edison, he does it in a backhanded way.
I am probably being a little skewed, and therefore unfair, myself. The book certainly has some excellent attributes to it - the photos and Edison's own sketches were interesting. The amount of research that was done, specifically the detailed research into his notes, letters and other documentation must have been enormous. The bottom line is that I was looking for an inspirational book on a true American genius and hero and I didn't get it. Perhaps if you are really looking for a historical analysis after reading a few other books on Edison this book will serve your purpose well. I will probably read another book on Edison hoping to get some inspiration.
Rating: 2
Summary: Very unsatisfying
Comment: I found this biography very unsatisfying. While it is considered the definitive Edision biography by the pre-eminent Edison scholar of the day, I thought that Edison was strangely absent from its pages. I thought that Israel gave short shrift to Edison the man and his family. Writing style is very dry--no personal details--only the big picture.
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Title: At Work With Thomas Edison: 10 Business Lessons from America's Greatest Innovator by Blaine McCormick, John P. Keegan ISBN: 1891984357 Publisher: Entrepreneur Media Inc. Pub. Date: September, 2001 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Uncommon Friends: Life with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Alexis Carrel, and Charles Lindbergh by James D. Newton ISBN: 0156926202 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: June, 1989 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: Edison: Inventing the Century by Neil Baldwin ISBN: 0226035719 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: April, 2001 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: Thomas Edison and Modern America: A Brief History With Documents by Theresa M. Collins, Lisa Gitelman, Gregory Jankunis, Collins Gitelman Jankunis ISBN: 0312247346 Publisher: Bedford/St. Martin's Pub. Date: May, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Thomas A. Edison: A Streak of Luck by Robert Conot ISBN: 0306802619 Publisher: DaCapo Press Pub. Date: March, 1986 List Price(USD): $19.50 |
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