Title: Edison Pdf
Author: Edmund Morris
Published Date: 2019
Page: 800
Praise for the Biographies of Edmund Morris The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt Winner of the Pulitzer Prize “One of those rare works that is both definitive for the period it covers and fascinating to read for sheer entertainment.”—The New York Times Book Review “A towering biography.”—Time Theodore Rex “A masterpiece . . . A great president has finally found a great biographer.”—The Washington Post “As a literary work on Theodore Roosevelt, it is unlikely ever to be surpassed. It is one of the great histories of the American presidency, worthy of being on a shelf alongside Henry Adams’s volumes on Jefferson and Madison.”—The Times Literary Supplement Colonel Roosevelt “Monumental . . . Morris is a stylish storyteller with an irresistible subject.”—The New York Times Book Review “Hair-raising . . . awe-inspiring . . . a worthy close to a trilogy sure to be regarded as one of the best studies not just of any president, but of any American.”—San Francisco Chronicle Edmund Morris (May 27, 1940 – May 24, 2019) was born and educated in Kenya and went to college in South Africa. He worked as an advertising copywriter in London before immigrating to the United States in 1968. His biography The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt won the Pulitzer Prize and American Book Award in 1980. Theodore Rex followed in 2001, and Colonel Roosevelt in 2010, so completing his three-volume life of Theodore Roosevelt. Morris was President Reagan’s authorized biographer and wrote the national bestseller Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan in 1999. He is also the author of Beethoven: The Universal Composer (2005), and This Living Hand (2012), a collection of essays. He has written extensively on travel and the arts for such publications as The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Harper's. He lived in New York and Connecticut with his wife and fellow biographer Sylvia Jukes Morris.
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 world—already reeling from his invention of the phonograph and dozens of other revolutionary devices—that it cast a shadow over his later achievements. In all, this near-deaf genius (“I haven’t heard a bird sing since I was twelve years old”) 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 Edison—the philosopher, the futurist, the chemist, the botanist, the wartime defense adviser, the founder of nearly 250 companies—as fully as it deconstructs the Edison of mythological memory. Edmund 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 Edison’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 Edison’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 page—the adored yet autocratic and often neglectful husband of two wives and father of six children. 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.
A True Inspiration A couple of times every century, out of the countless human beings that inhabit the Earth, a few rise to the level of genius. These rare individuals embody a different categorization, difficult to fathom, but nonetheless single-handedly bend the trajectory of the human race and project it forward. Thomas Edison is inarguably one such example.Edmund Morris delivers another phenomenal biography. Edison's story is wonderfully written and even after 600+ pages, I wanted to learn more. Thomas Edison was a dynamo of energy, working 18-20 hour days for most of his life. His unbelievable curiosity matched with his self-confidence- his unwillingness to accept what he read and instead test it for himself- led to 1,093 patents in his life. He averaged an invention every 11 days for 40 years! His persistence and tenacity are inspiring- he tried over 6000 materials in his search for the ideal light filament, and 9000 experiments to find the right pair of metals for his storage battery. Everybody knows about Edison and the light bulb, but I was unaware of how many other historic inventions he was involved in. I won't list them here but the book is worth the read to find out.Thomas Edison was born to invent and that's what he did. He is a concrete example of living one's life to the fullest and demonstrates what is possible when the human mind is fully activated. It is terrific that one of today's great biographers finally chose him as their subject. One of Edison's close associates put it best: "The one great impression of my years in Menlo Park was how impenetrable the veil of the future seems to be when new problems are to be solved, and how simple the result often is when the darkness of ignorance is lighted by the genius of one man."I do have one minor qualm. The book is written in opposite chronological order, which leads to several footnotes referencing later sections that explain events that led to the current discussion. This is somewhat confusing, I prefer the standard method where events build on one another. But given the immense gift that Morris has provided, this sort of complaint is admittedly very trivial.Lastly, I just wikipedia'ed Edmund Morris and learned the unfortunate news that he passed away in May of this year. RIP. He left us all with yet another irreplaceable biography and he will always be appreciated for his lucid and exciting stories detailing the lives of historical figures. Highly highly recommend.A Brilliant Introduction to an American Original and His World Edmund Morris is best known as the author of an acclaimed triptych on Theodore Roosevelt. He’s one of the best of the notable group of popular historians who rose in the 1970s and 1980s, continuing to the present day. As academe retreats into insularity, historians such as Morris and David McCullough have brought history and biography to life for millions of Americans.Morris’s decision to engage the life and legacy of Thomas Alva Edison is inspired. His deep study of Theodore Roosevelt positioned him well both to comprehend the significance of Edison and do the granular work to bring an increasingly distant figure to life.As with TR, Edison’s life and work is singular and of a piece with his own time. Morris also demonstrates how strikingly relevant many aspects of their era is to our own. The transformational changes in technology, culture, and politics now underway are no more profound than those of a century ago. One could argue that the people of that time faced greater challenges.His debut biography, 'The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt,' is memorable for the match of Roosevelt’s larger-than-life early years with Morris’s literary sensibility. His subsequent works have shown greater and lesser success in his attempts to create, in Roosevelt’s words, history as literature.Morris struggled with the limitations of the biographical genre in his authorized biography of President Reagan, 'Dutch.' It’s a commonplace that the decisions of the non-fiction writer, adhering closely to the facts, may nonetheless depart from ultimate understanding or truth. Unable to get hold of Reagan as a political and cultural figure, Morris inserted himself as a fictional narrator, commenting on real-life events. The result was disappointing if not tragic; he was the late president’s authorized biographer, accorded rare access to the administration and its papers.In 'Edison,' Morris faced the task of introducing the life and times of a figure whose accomplishments literally transformed the reality of life for his nation and the entire planet. The inventor emerges as not an entirely appealing personality. His legendary capacity for concentration and extended work was accompanied by strained personal and professional relationships. Edison was a great inventor by any reckoning. He was also remote and callous.Morris reverses the chronology of Edison’s life. He opens with his subject’s death. This enables him to establish Edison’s significance and recognition by his contemporaries. Morris then moves backwards, dividing the life of the “Wizard of Menlo Park” by the subjects of his work.It’s as if Edison is a great tree that Morris prunes and finally cuts to its core, its roots. The “rosebud” moment, in Morris’s rendering, is Edison’s childhood loss of hearing. This is at once poignant—Edison’s inventions including breakthroughs in the transmission and recording of sound—and explanatory of the separation that was a foundation of his professional achievements and personal limitations.'Edison' is meticulously researched and beautifully written. The book itself is well designed and formatted, with apt illustrations. It will likely not be regarded as highly as Morris’s’ work on Roosevelt. That may be an unapproachable standard. Nonetheless, it's a brilliant introduction to an American original and his world.
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