Edison

The book is an exhaustive -- and at times exhausting -- treatment in detail of Edison's life. Large sections of it that are so technical and detailed that my eyes glazed over and I skimmed over the material. You will get a deep dive into electricity and various engineering minutiae of Edison's prolific inventive mind.What comes through was Edison's almost superhuman, inexhaustible, indefatigable energy and intellectual wattage. He would work for long stretches of time without sleeping or eating, so focused on his experiments, inventions and projects. His mind was constantly churning with ideas as he filled notebooks with future visions and projects. He would try hundreds, thousands of methods and experiments until he found a solution to the problem that he was tackling. His intellectual persistence seems superhuman. It is hard to think of another individual who was his prolific and productive through sheer output of ideas and ingenious inventions.This is not a hagiography, however, that lionizes Edison. Feet of clay show through. The book shows him, warts and all. He seemed to lack business savvy and flirted with financial problems despite the massive financial windfalls available from his various inventions, patents and products. He wed twice, but one gets the impression that he essentially lived a life separate from his wives, so absorbed was he with his work. His children became afterthoughts as well; it is hard to say that he had any relationship with them other than monetarily. He fathered children, but did not seem to be much of a Dad to his children, many of whom suffered from lacking much other than a genetic/biological relationship with him.The curious feature of this book is its unorthodox structure and organization. I am a huge fan of Edmund Morris and -- in particular -- his three-volume opus on the life of Theodore Roosevelt. Unlike those books, however, Morris opts for a weird organizational structure to this biography. Essentially, he begins the book at the end of Edison's life and then works backwards in roughly ten-year chunks from the end-of-life, ending with Edison's boyhood in Ohio. It is a Benjamin Button-esque approach to biography. It is not reader-friendly and evokes some head-scratching.One might expect that, in a Preface/Foreword, either Morris or his Editor posthumously would have provided context for the unorthodox, counterintuitive anti-chronological approach used here. It's almost as though Morris was saying, "I did it because . . . well, I can!"As other reviewers have correctly noted, one workaround is to simply read the chapters in reverse order. I chose not to do that, but why not make the manuscript as reader-friendly as possible or provide context for the unorthodox biographical approach? A rhetorical question but a legitimate one nonetheless.Ultimately, this was a detailed biography of perhaps America's most prolific inventor. The technical details and approach to the narrative however at times tested my willpower to grind on through to the very end. Your mileage may vary.

A great treatment of Edison and his amazing life of invention. Truly an incredible man and this book does a great job of taking you through his life a decade at a time - but backwards! You start in the last decade and end with his childhood. While I appreciate the creative attempt I didn't think it worked well. We see relationships in their final stages before we have any idea how those relationships began and changed. I think if I had read the book backwards it would a five star rating - just didn't work backwards for me. Your mileage may vary.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Edmund Morris has written a detailed biography of America's most famous inventor and genius. The work includes over three hundred footnotes and many black and white photos of Edison, his family, friends, homes and lab facilities. For some unknown reason, the author begins the book at the end of Edison's life and ends the book with his birth and childhood. This reviewer chose to read the book BACKWARDS starting with part 8 and ending with the prologue because it made more sense of Edison's life, growth and development. This arrangement of chronology is the only major flaw of the book.Labeled as "addled" by his first grade teacher, Edison's mother removed him from public school to receive home-schooling. This provided the time and freedom for him to read widely and the opportunity to "tinker", especially with chemicals. At the age of twelve, Edison lost 75% of his hearing in his left ear. He never revealed the cause of his deafness. By the end of his life, he was almost completely deaf. Despite this, he persisted in his search for the "perfect" tone for his phonograph and motion pictures. Edison founded the first film studio. His fanaticism to accept nothing but excellence resulted in experimentation on thousands of light bulbs and phonographs. Edison was a taskmaster who drove his employees and himself to work long hours late into the night. He was not afraid of failure, for without failure he could not perfect his inventions.To date, Edison holds the record for patents in both the United States and Europe. Several of his inventions were not even patented, like the x-ray fluoroscope. He vacillated from being a millionaire to bankruptcy because his primary focus was more on inventing what was pratical, than what was profitable. The author provides details about Edison's two wives, six children and famous friends and colleagues including Nikola Tesla, Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone. These facts flesh out the life of this driven inventor. He received a range of honors including an honorary Academy Award and the Congressional Gold Medal for defense work during WWI. It is no wonder that when Edison passed away, lights were extinguished for one minute from the torch of the Statue of Liberty across America throughout cities and towns . What a fitting homage for the man who both lighted and enlightened the world.

I have followed Thomas Edison's life and accomplishments ever since my Father began taking me regularly to Menlo Park as a child. This book allowed me to dust off those memories of over 60 years ago to shed an in depth account of the story behind all that this great man represented. I even had ties to his work in Ogdensburg, NJ when I worked in the mines owned at the time by New Jersey Zinc during the Summer of 1968 before I left New Jersey for college in Pennsylvania. Not a stone is left unturned in telling this complete story of a man who was as famous and revered world wide as was Mohammed Ali during more recent times. It is a voluminous tome to say the least, but worth every page turn.

As much about business as invention. An implicit guide to life: Half what to do and half what not to do. Edited, you might say, by Sigmund Freud.

Impressive inventor and the book is filled with lots of historic fragments of his life. Just don't get why the writer decided to reverse the order of the biography. So annoying to read from his older years to the younger years, what a waste of an otherwise good book.

Educational..?

Great I bought the aothor's book on Theodore Roosevelt

Loved the book