22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Well written and interesting, April 6, 2006
This review is from: Electric Universe: How Electricity Switched on the Modern World (Paperback)
This book, a popular account of a number of things that relate to electricity and electronics, reads very well and I found it to be one of those gripping books that one wants to finish.
The author makes a few claims that I have never seen before, such as one that Morse, in inventing the telegraph, stole most of his ideas from Joseph Henry, and I'd be curious to see how much of this is generally accepted. But if so, it would certainly appear that Samuel Morse was overrated by history. The book covers both Morse and Henry, and also such well-known inventors as Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, often showing sides of them that we don't see elsewhere. The book devotes a large amount of space to Alan Turing, who is obviously highly regarded by the author. It also covers much of the scientific side of the story, even giving a glimpse of quantum mechanics (the scientific theory which underlies much of modern electronics).
That being said, this is a _popular_ book. It does not attempt to present all the mathematics of Maxwell's electromagnetic theory or quantum mechamics, but simply describes them in terms that a non-physicist can comprehend, and I think it is successful at that level. If you don't expect of it something that clearly was not intended by the author, but want a well-written book on the historical aspects of electric and electronic devices, you will be well-served by this book.
A very extensive bibliography, not just listing the books but explaining what you will find in each one cited, ends the text of this book.
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
The 'Cliffs Notes' history of electricity, May 26, 2006
This review is from: Electric Universe: How Electricity Switched on the Modern World (Paperback)
Purchased this book after seeing that it won the 2006 Aventis General Prize for popular science writing. While the book is a quick and interesting read, I found that it ultimately left me wanting more... much more. The book certainly manages to hit many of the high points in the history of electricity and electronics. Unfortunately, it fails to provide much detail about any single person or idea. The book does include an extensive "Guide to Further Reading" and numerous notes for those who like more details. Annoyingly, the notes aren't referenced in the main text so you're forced to read in parallel through the main portion of the book as well as the "Notes" chapter if you want the full story.
In the end, I suppose my own expectations got the better of me: I was hoping for an in-depth history of electricity, perhaps along the lines of Richard Rhodes Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Making of the Atomic Bomb", rather than a entertaining afternoon read...
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not as good as E=mc squared, September 17, 2006
This review is from: Electric Universe: How Electricity Switched on the Modern World (Paperback)
Bodanis's prior book "E=mc squared" was a more informative and entertaining read than Electric Universe. Electric Universe was a bit too dumbed-down technically in its attempts to be accessible. More detail could have been paid to Maxwell and his wave equations, and ignoring Nikola Tesla's contributions to electromagnetics is a glaring ommission. Bodanis does present though some interesting observations and anecdotes on the personalities and politics of science; scientists may claim the moral high ground with their vetting of each other when they compare themselves to the non-scientific community, but really great scientitsts are often no better than the rest of us, all's fair in love, war, and scientific endeavor.
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