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Summary
Summary
Using unprecedented access to Edison family papers and years of research at the Edison corporate archives, Neil Baldwin offers a revealing portrait of one of Americas seminal inventors: a man whose imagination, dynamism, entrepreneurial brilliance epitomized the American dream as he became a victim of its darker side.
"Baldwin has demythologized the man and left the genius bigger than life." --Newsweek
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931), who introduced the light bulb and the phonograph to a startled world from his pastoral New Jersey retreat, strides across Baldwin's engrossing epic biography as a complex, contradictory figure. The hearing-impaired inventor was a visionary inclined ``to think globally long before achieving success locally,'' a cranky, authoritarian businessman, a daredevil entrepreneur pathologically addicted to work, a metaphysical thinker who practiced automatic writing and who, inspired by Madame Helena Blavatsky's theosophical/mysticism, postulated that intelligence pervades every atom of God's creation. To Baldwin (Man Ray: American Artist), the Ohio-born genius, who pioneered the microphone, the motion-picture camera and the world's first central electric-light power plant, embodied the American experiment in industrial civilization and the potential of technological change. By charting Edison's relations with venture capitalists, unsung collaborators and competitors, Baldwin spins an inspirational American saga of titanic determination and protean imagination. Edison's later projects-his decade-long, abortive iron-ore milling and smelting operation, and his return to the soil, at age 80, in search of a natural source for rubber in his own herbarium-take their rightful place in the story. We also meet the torn family man whose neglect of home and hearth contributed to the death at age 29 of his chronically ill, emotionally troubled first wife, Mary Stilwell. His second wife, heiress Mina Miller, by this account became his subservient helpmeet, while his domineering, impossible-to-please ways drove his six children into convoluted patterns of dependence and alienation. Photos. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
This new biography attempts not only to chronicle Edison's achievements but to set him in the context of his time. It falls short on both counts. Thomas Edison remains, more than 60 years after his death, the quintessential American genius. The electric light alone earned him a central spot in the pantheon of inventors. Add to it the phonograph, motion pictures, and over 1,000 patents for everything from an electric pen to a method for enriching iron ore, and it's no wonder Baldwin (Man Ray, 1988) seems overwhelmed by his subject. Fiercely competitive, Edison was a workaholic long before the term was invented. His first wife, Mary (who died an early death), rarely saw him. He would work 60 hours straight on a project that caught his fancy and frequently juggled four or five ongoing projects at once. His genius for assembling a team of men totally dedicated to his goals--and willing to delegate all the glory to the ``Old Man''--was surpassed only by his genius for promotion. (The incandescent light was far less significant than his convincing the world that his system, and only his, was the light of the future.) Baldwin does present an Edison more complex than the Horatio Alger template into which his contemporaries wanted to fit his life, but he never quite manages to pull together the various strands of his portrait. The reader gets only perfunctory descriptions of Edison's early inventions and how they were received, let alone any insight into how he was able to convince others to back his projects or to join his team, before the phonograph made him world-famous. Like many eminent Victorians, Edison was a fascinating monster, and Baldwin captures some of both the fascination and the monstrosity; but one comes away from the book feeling that the best part of the story remains untold. (50 b&w photos, unseen)
Booklist Review
The Wizard of Menlo Park always attracted a great deal of press and biographical attention because his inventions--the lightbulb, microphone, phonograph, moving pictures--appeared nigh miraculous. Edison himself hated the Merlin-like moniker, claiming only to have been a diligent man. Baldwin agrees he was--and reports that at 65, Thomas Alva Edison worked a 112-hour week. Domestically, Edison was not so successful. Thomas Jr. became so estranged from his celebrated father that he dropped the surname and skulked about under various aliases. And Edison cut off relations with a daughter who had married an officer in the kaiser's army. Was Edison a flawed father or titanic exemplar of self-made individualism? Baldwin eschews categorical conclusions and rather invites the curious into Edison's homes, labs, and factories where they can make their own inspection. Libraries without any Edison biography (the last, by Wyn Wachhorst, is 15 years old and o.p.) should seriously consider this one, completely researched and ably executed. --Gilbert Taylor
Choice Review
This richly textured biography of an American icon provides a picture of Edison that both humanizes him and explains the basis for his larger-than-life image, which remains engraved on our national psyche. We learn of his forbears as well as his early life, both as a boy and as a young man. But nothing ever quite explains the emergence of singular genius so that readers will form their own explanations of the rise of the greatest of American inventors just after the Civil War. He claimed, or at least tried to claim, that he was only a practical man who worked mostly on his own. In fact, Edison's greatest invention probably was the industrial research and development laboratory employing a staff of highly competent specialists. Moreover, as Charles Proteus Steinmetz, a genius in his own right, shrewdly observed before the turn of the century, although Edison had never gone to college, he knew more theory than many college-educated persons. Using the best recent Edison scholarship, Baldwin has written an unusually good popular study of the man and his times that displays the inevitable warts as well as the accomplishments in context. More than a hundred pages of notes for readers inclined to scholarship. A book well worth reading. General; undergraduate; two-year technical program students. M. Levinson; University of Washington
Library Journal Review
Thomas Alva Edison, an icon to millions, was a prodigious inventor and emblem of the American entrepreneurial spirit. His impact on our century via the electric light, the phonograph, the movie, and even Portland cement truly transformed the American experience. Capturing not only the creative and inventive thrust of Edison's life but its personal aspects, Baldwin offers first-rate writing. Baldwin, author of Man Ray: American Artist (LJ 10/1/88) and executive director of the National Book Foundation, describes with care the family and business milieu Edison fostered and lived in. He also gives generous treatment to the important people in Edison's life. The story is fascinating. Highly recommended for all libraries. [For more on Baldwin and Edison, see LJ's Behind the Book interview, "Biography of an Inventive Life," on p. 116.-Ed.]-Michael D. Cramer, Virginia Polytechnic & State Univ. Libs., Blacksburg (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
