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Edison: A Life of Invention. By Paul Israel. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998. 480 pp. Photos, illustrations, notes, index. Cloth, $30.00; paper, $18.95. ISBN: Cloth 0-471-52942-7; paper 0-471-36270-0.
More than forty years ago, Matthew Josephson complained that, for all the ink devoted to Thomas Edison, there were few worthwhile accounts of his life and work. Josephson helped remedy that deficiency with his Edison, a biography that has stood up remarkably well since its publication in 1959. Other talented historians have revised aspects of the story that Josephson told, but his lively book has continued to be the standard life of history's most renowned inventor-until, that is, the appearance of this exemplary biography by Paul Israel.
Edison is a difficult subject for a biographer. His papers include not just abundant correspondence but also a staggering number of laboratory notebooks. While he did not publish much, he signed patents aplenty and was nearly as prolific at striking deals. Unraveling the tangle of his business dealings might frustrate an experienced auditor, as it certainly did some of his partners. Tracing the history of his inventions-their development, marketing, and consequences-takes a biographer far beyond the life of an individual. His machines were not silent or obscure; they startled. The phonograph and moving picture, the carbon-button telephone, the incandescent lamp and lighting system made Edison world-famous by the time he was forty and a figure of legend long before he died. Not only does this create difficulties in sifting truth from fiction; it also takes a biographer deep into the material culture and social history of his subject's era. Perhaps most difficult of all, Edison's life invites the biographer to account for a creativity that sometimes seems sui generic and is, even under the most critical scrutiny, extraordinary.
Israel traverses this challenging course with hardly a stumble. As editor of the Edison papers, Israel has lived with his subject for many years. It shows, both in the detail and the larger structure of the book. Those who want a hero can still find one here, although the proportions are human rather than divine. The avuncular-looking Edison was capable of cruel indifference to family, friends, and coworkers. He was often ungenerous to assistants, even long after his reputation was...