At the dawn of the twentieth century, General Electric (using Thomas Edison’s direct current) and Westinghouse (employing Nikola Tesla’s groundbreaking alternating current) were locked in combat to determine which would dominate the technological fate of the nation. Electricity was thought to be a highly ambiguous force: both godlike creative power and demonic destroyer of life. Metzger argues that for scientists of the day, as well as the general populace, the electric chair was both harbinger and early pinnacle of modernity, the high altar of the rising cult of progress. In the popular imagination, Tesla and Edison were seen as nearly superhuman beings, and their struggle was not only for wealth and power, but to reshape the face of America. In Blood and Volts, Metzger creates a unique synthesis of scholarship, storytelling and cultural critique to present a clear and compelling story of America struggling to define itself through scientific innovation.
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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An insightful work that explains the electric chair enigma.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Blood and Volts: Edison, Tesla, & the Electric Chair (Paperback)
The historical development and use of the electric chair is a subject represented by only a handful of academic (or at least accurate) books. If you read only one, make it Blood and Volts. Metzger must be congratulated for not simply pandering to the morbidly curious. Sure, there's a lot of gory detail -- necessary in describing such a technological enigma as the electric chair -- but Metzger moves beyond this. He gives us an uncannilly lucid view of the society, the people, and the politics that spawned the electric chair. He shows us not only the self-congratulatory PR of the day, but also the soul-searching criticism leveled at the electric chair by scientists, doctors, and the popular press. We assume that capital punishment advocates all hailed this new "scientific" method of killing. Not so, as Metzger shows us. After learning of the actual results of its use, many seriously proposed a return to hanging as more humane. It takes much to explain a period of history in which most homes (and prisons) were lit by kerosene lamps, yet prisoners were executed by technology so exotic that experts had to be shipped in just to operate it (as the author points out, no one ever knew how much voltage or current actually killed the first victim of the chair, and the duration of shocks to be given had to be "guessed-at" by two physicians minutes before the execution). If you want to truly understand how the electric chair came about, and why it remains today, Blood and Volts is a good place to start.
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