There are countless books on Thomas Edison, and for good reason, as one of America’s foremost businessmen, his inventions, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and early versions of the electric light bulb , have had a widespread impact on the modern industrialized world.
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“You might think that the monetary value of an invention constitutes its reward to the man who loves his work. but speaking for myself, I can honestly say that this is not so… I continue to find my greatest pleasure, and therefore my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success,” he commented.
To get to the bottom of what inspired one of history’s greatest figures to the heights of social contribution, we’ve compiled a list of the 10 best books about Thomas Edison.
edison by edmund morris
Although Thomas Alva Edison was the most famous American of his time and remains an international name today, he is primarily remembered for the gift of universal electric light. his invention of the first practical incandescent lamp 140 years ago so dazzled the world that he was already reeling from his invention of the phonograph and dozens of other revolutionary devices, which cast a shadow over his later achievements. In total, this almost deaf genius (“I haven’t heard a bird sing since I was twelve years old”) patented 1,093 inventions, not counting others, such as the x-ray fluoroscope, which he left without a license for the benefit of medicine.
one of the achievements of this amazing 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 defense adviser in times of war, the founder of almost 250 companies, as completely as he deconstructs the edison of mythological memory. Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Edmund Morris brings to the task all the interpretive acumen and literary elegance that distinguished his earlier biographies of Theodore Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, and Ludwig van Beethoven.
morris, a musician by training, is especially well equipped to recount edison’s fifty-year obsession with recording technology and his pioneering advances in the synchronization of film and sound. Morris brushes aside conspiracy theories positing a feud between Edison and Nikola Tesla and presents evidence of their mutually admiring, if wary, relationship.
the wizard of menlo park by randall e. strong
At the height of his fame, Thomas Alva Edison was hailed as “the Napoleon of invention” and burned in the public imagination as a virtual demi-god. Starting with the first public demonstrations of the phonograph in 1878 and spreading through the development of the incandescent light and the first motion picture cameras, the Edison name became an emblem of all the wonders and promises of the emerging age of technological marvels.
But as Randall Stross makes clear in this critical biography of the man who is arguably the most famous American in the world, Thomas Edison’s greatest invention may have been his own celebrity. Edison was undoubtedly a technical genius, but Stross peels the man out of the layers of mythmaking and separates his true achievements from his almost equally colossal failures. How much credit should Edison receive for the various inventions popularly attributed to him, and how many of them were the result of both the inspiration and perspiration of his rivals and even his own assistants?
This bold reappraisal of Edison’s life and career answers this and many other important questions as he tells the story of how he came across his most influential inventions as a young man and spent the rest of his long life trying to conjure up a similar success.
jeff guin’s tramps
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in 1914, henry ford and naturalist john burroughs visited thomas edison in florida and toured the everglades. The following year, Ford, Edison and tire manufacturer Harvey Firestone teamed up on a summer camping trip and decided to call themselves the Tramps. they would continue their summer road trips until 1925, when they announced that their fame made it difficult for them to continue.
Though the drifters traveled with an entourage of chefs, butlers, and others, this elite fraternity also had a serious purpose: to examine America’s road conditions and improve the convenience of automobile travel. the cars were unreliable and the roads were even worse. But newspaper coverage of these trips was extensive, and as automobiles and roads improved, the summer drive soon became a desired element of American life.
The Tramps is “a portrait of America’s burgeoning love affair with the automobile” (npr), but it also sheds light on the important relationship between old Edison and young Ford, who once worked for the famous inventor. Road trips made the automobile ubiquitous and magnified Ford’s reputation, even as Edison’s diminished.
graham moore’s last days of night
new york, 1888. gas lamps still flicker in the streets of the city, but the miracle of electric light is in its infancy. the person who controls the means to turn night into day will make history and a great fortune. An inexperienced young attorney named Paul Cravath, fresh out of Columbia Law School, takes on a case that seems impossible to win. Paul’s client George Westinghouse has been sued by Thomas Edison over a billion dollar question: who invented the light bulb and has the right to feed the country?
In the obsessive quest for victory, Paul crosses paths with Nikola Tesla, an eccentric and brilliant inventor who may hold the key to defeating Edison, and Agnes Huntington, a beautiful opera singer who proves to be an impeccable performer within. and off stage. . As Paul takes ever greater risks, he will discover that everyone in his path is playing their own game, and no one is quite what they seem.
innovate like edison by michael j. gelb
bestselling author michael j. gelb and sarah miller caldicott present a carefully researched and easy-to-apply system of the five secrets to success inspired by the creative methods of thomas alva edison. Edison, the greatest innovator in American history, laid the foundation for America’s global leadership in innovation through his focus on practical achievement. Now Gelb and Caldicott apply the best practices of this American genius to contemporary business situations to help today’s leaders harness their own innovative potential. This gem among Thomas Edison books is a blueprint for success that will enable executives and entrepreneurs to reinvigorate their own ingenuity and thrive in today’s culture of innovation.
jill jonnes empires of light
In the closing decades of the 19th century, three brilliant and visionary titans from America’s golden age (Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and George Westinghouse) battled bitterly as each vied to create a vast and powerful electrical empire. In Empires of Light, historian Jill Jonnes portrays this extraordinary trio and their fascinating, ruthless world of cutting-edge science, invention, intrigue, money, death, and hard-eyed Wall Street millionaires.
edison struggled to introduce his radical new direct current (dc) technology into the riot of new york city when tesla and westinghouse challenged his dominance with their alternating current (ac), thus setting the stage for one of the bloodiest disputes. in American business history, the war of electrical currents. the battlefields: wall street, the 1893 chicago world’s fair, niagara falls, and finally death chamber: jonnes takes us on a tense walk down a prison corridor to the room lit by the sun where william kemmler, convicted ax murderer, became the first man to die in the electric chair.
edison and mark essig’s electric chair
despite being an outspoken opponent of the death penalty, edison used his laboratory resources and reputation behind the creation of a very different kind of device: the electric chair. Deftly exploring this amazing chapter in American history, edison & The Electric Chair offers a vivid portrait of a nation on the cusp of modernity and a provocative new examination of Edison himself.
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edison defended the electric chair for reasons that remain controversial to this day. Probing the fascinating history of electricity, Mark Essig explores America’s love of technology and its fascination with violent death, capturing a time when audiences were mesmerized and terrified by an invisible force that produced blazing light, propelled streetcars, had telephone conversations and killed.
unusual friends of james newton
The Unusual Friends of James Newton is “an enchanting portrait of five great men who shared special friendships and common visions” (book list). Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Alexis Carrel, and Charles Lindbergh were twentieth-century giants known personally to very few. In this captivating memoir, James Newton recalls a lifetime of friendship with all of them, a friendship he began when he was only twenty years old and director of development at Edison Park in Fort Meyers, Florida. Based on Newton’s diaries, his memoirs, and his extensive correspondence, Uncommon Friends is a unique opportunity to share insight into the personal side of some legendary historical figures.
the edison gene by thom hartmann
Thomas Edison was expelled from school for behavior that would today be labeled ADHD, but his mother understood how to salvage his self-esteem and set him up for a successful life. In The Edison Gene, Thom Hartmann shows that the creativity, impulsiveness, and distractibility that are hallmarks of ADHD are not signs of a disorder at all, but components of a set of highly adaptive skills used by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. these features have been critical to the survival and development of our modern civilization and will be vital as humanity faces new challenges in the future.
hartmann, originator of the “hunter vs. farmer” theory of ADHD, examines the latest findings confirming the existence of an ADHD gene and the global catastrophe 40,000 years ago that triggered its development. Citing examples of major innovators in our modern age, he argues that children who possess the “edison gene” have neurology that is programmed to bring them brilliant success as innovators, inventors, explorers, and entrepreneurs.
offers concrete strategies to help children of the edison gene reach their full potential and shows that rather than being “problems,” these children are a vital gift to our society and the world.
edison: a life of invention by paul israel
from the noted edison scholar, in the revealing edison: a life of invention, author paul israel deftly situates his subject within a fully realized portrait of a flourishing country on the verge of massive change. The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed the birth of corporate America and, with it, the new overlapping interests of scientific, technological, and industrial cultures.
Working against the common perception of edison as a symbol of a mythical American past in which persistence and individuality produced hard-earned success,
israel demonstrates how edison’s remarkable career was actually a product of the changing era of the inventor. Edison drew extensively on contemporary scientific knowledge and research, and was a crucial figure in transforming invention into modern corporate research and collaborative development.
informed by more than five million pages of archival documents, the ambitious life of paul israel’s edison illuminates the unexamined corners of a uniquely influential and triumphant scientific career.
Provided with unprecedented access to his workshop diaries, notebooks, and letters, this gem among Thomas Edison books provides new insights into how the inventor’s creative mind worked. And for the first time, much attention is devoted to his early family life in Ohio and Michigan, where the young Edison honed his business sense and eye for innovation as a newsstand owner and publisher of a weekly newspaper, underscoring the subsequent successes of the inventor with new resonance and pathos.
If you enjoyed this guide to the essential books on Thomas Edison, be sure to check out our list of the top 10 books on Henry Ford!
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