The Invention of Everything Else [Paperback]

Samantha Hunt (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company (2008)
• ASIN: B0018OUZ8E
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,216,523 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Quite honestly, radio is a nuisance. I know. I'm its father.", April 10, 2008

By 

Amanda Richards (Georgetown, Guyana) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Invention of Everything Else (Hardcover)

This book is primarily about Nikola Tesla, the eccentric scientist and inventor from Smiljan, who invented AC electricity and wireless communication and belatedly received recognition as the inventor of radio. For the most part, it is a fictionalized account of the latter part of his life while living in New York, especially the time he spent at the New Yorker Hotel, and his interactions with his few friends and acquaintances.

It's also about a fictional chambermaid named Louisa, who is inclined towards being insatiably curious about the lives of the guests of the hotel. Louisa becomes obsessed with Tesla, his life and his inventions, and the two are drawn into a platonic friendship after discovering a mutual interest in homing pigeons. Louisa is also a part of another sub-story involving her widowed father, a family friend who claims to have invented a time machine, and a mysterious young man who may have come from the future.

Even though it's a relatively small book, it includes a detailed account of the life of Tesla, his triumphs, his failures, his phobias and inventions, and the many times he snatched defeat from the jaws of success. The writing style is largely conversational, and it doesn't get so bogged down in science that your eyes glaze over, but the overall structure of the story is sometimes hard to follow (and swallow).

The fact and the fiction don't quite fit together in this historical work, but the rich descriptions of the architecture, social structure and ambience of early twentieth century New York make for interesting reading.

Recommended for inventors, science buffs and historians

Amanda Richards, April 10, 2008

34 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Inventive story, January 15, 2008

By 

switterbug (Austin, Texas) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Invention of Everything Else (Hardcover)

Samantha Hunt's novel is an historical fiction surrounding the last months of the life of Nikola Tesla, the inventor of alternating current electricity. His life was much obscured by the better known Thomas Edison; however, as this book well illuminates, Edison was more rigid, conforming, capitalistic. It is a story about creativity, artistic inspiration, and imagining the unimaginable. What happens if the spirit can transcend into reality? What if a powerful intuition can link us to something infinite and previously unexplainable? This novel is a novel of ideas as much as it is a fictional biography on the life of a genius.

Magical realism blends with scientific query and knowledge. It is 1943 at the New Yorker hotel, where Tesla lives in isolation and penury with his pigeons and his journal and his thoughts. He is fascinated by the mystery of homing pigeons, the fact that they consistently find their way home. He meets Louisa, an educated young chambermaid there, who shares his fascination with pigeons and has a coop she keeps at her home. They develop a fragile, compassionate, and intellectual relationship.

As the story unfolds, mysteries open to even larger mysteries, and time as a theme seems to have a current as charged as electricity. Louisa has an admirer, Arthur, who may be from the future. Her father, a melancholy and also isolated man still grieving for his dead wife, desires to enter a time machine (built by a friend of his) and reunite with his dead wife.

Hunt's writing is sensuous and full of inner dialogue, blending aspects of psychology, philosophy, science, and science fiction. The characters are supple and vivid, but at times seem remote and stilted in relation to each other, even while their individual story lines overlap well and draw out the plot to its interesting conclusion.

The novel celebrates the luminous magic of science and nature and the inexplicable aspects of Time. The spirit of invention, in The Invention of Everything else, especially honors the life force itself. It does so with a bulging, beating heart.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Invention of Everything Else, January 29, 2008

By 

Naz (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Invention of Everything Else (Hardcover)

I would definitely have to recommend this book to people. The writing is amazing, & you can tell the amount of research that went into it because of the amount of rich detail Hunt has carefully crafted into the novel. The only thing is that it is very, very sad, especially as it begins to near its climax. But overall, it is an amazing book to read, & it flows together wonderfully. I am glad that I bought it.