NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER â€¢ From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edmund Morris comes a revelatory new biography of Thomas Alva Edison, the most prolific genius in American

Edison
- NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edmund Morris comes a revelatory new biography of Thomas Alva Edison, the most prolific genius in American history. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Time Publishers Weekly Kirkus Reviews
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER â€¢ From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edmund Morris comes a revelatory new biography of Thomas Alva Edison, the most prolific genius in American history.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Time â€¢ Publishers Weekly â€¢ Kirkus Reviews

Although Thomas Alva Edison was the most famous American of his time, and remains an international name today, he is mostly remembered only for the gift of universal electric light. His invention of the first practical incandescent lamp 140 years ago so dazzled the worldâ€”already reeling from his invention of the phonograph and dozens of other revolutionary devicesâ€”that it cast a shadow over his later achievements. In all, this near-deaf genius (â€œI havenâ€™t heard a bird sing since I was twelve years oldâ€) patented 1,093 inventions, not including others, such as the X-ray fluoroscope, that he left unlicensed for the benefit of medicine.

One of the achievements of this staggering new biography, the first major life of Edison in more than twenty years, is that it portrays the unknown Edisonâ€”the philosopher, the futurist, the chemist, the botanist, the wartime defense adviser, the founder of nearly 250 companiesâ€”as fully as it deconstructs the Edison of mythological memory.Â EdmundÂ Morris, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, brings to the task all the interpretive acuity and literary elegance that distinguished his previous biographies of Theodore Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, and Ludwig van Beethoven. A trained musician, Morris is especially well equipped to recount Edisonâ€™s fifty-year obsession with recording technology and his pioneering advances in the synchronization of movies and sound. Morris sweeps aside conspiratorial theories positing an enmity between Edison and Nikola Tesla and presents proof of their mutually admiring, if wary, relationship.

Enlightened by seven years of research among the five million pages of original documents preserved in Edisonâ€™s huge laboratory at West Orange, New Jersey, and privileged access to family papers still held in trust, Morris is also able to bring his subject to life on the pageâ€”the adored yet autocratic and often neglectful husband of two wives and father of six children.Â If the great man who emerges from it is less a sentimental hero than an overwhelming force of nature, driven onward by compulsive creativity, then Edison is at last getting his biographical due.
Country USA
Brand Random House Books for Young Readers
Manufacturer Random House
Binding Hardcover
ItemPartNumber Illustrations, unspecified
Color Black
ReleaseDate 2019-10-22
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780812993110

Country	USA
Brand	Random House Books for Young Readers
Manufacturer	Random House
Binding	Hardcover
ItemPartNumber	Illustrations, unspecified
Color	Black
ReleaseDate	2019-10-22
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780812993110

Edison

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