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Electric Universe: The Shocking True Story of Electricity | 
 enlarge | Author: David Bodanis
Publisher: Crown
Category: Book
List Price: $24.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  27 reviews
Sales Rank: 797998
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.7 x 1.2
Dewey Decimal Number: 537
ASIN: B000S9D5E6
Publication Date: February 15, 2005
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Amazon.com Review
Despite the fact that our lives are powered by electricity to an astonishing degree, most of us have little or no understanding of how or why it works. Instead, we rely on a blurry notion that it flows--like water--through wires to turn on our appliances. In Electric Universe, David Bodanis fools readers, by keeping them entertained and intrigued, into learning the science behind electricity. He does this by telling a series of stories, starting with how a backwoods American really invented the telegraph and how Samuel Morse stole the credit for it. From there, he works through the lives of Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Michael Faraday, and other pioneers. He shows how their experiments affected their lives--never more poignantly than with the tragic story of Alan Turing, whose early work designing computers wasn't enough to prevent him from being driven to suicide. It's surprisingly easy to identify with some of these brilliant scientists, because Bodanis relates their failures as well as their successes. In the end, although we may continue using words such as "current" to describe the "flow" of electrons, Bodanis makes certain that we see electrical energy for what it really is, at a subatomic, quantum level. Even so, there's not a single boring bit in the book. Electric Universe is an excellent scientific history, one that reveals both the progress of knowledge and the strange science of the wiggling electrons that run our lives. --Therese Littleton
Product Description
In his bestselling E=mc2, David Bodanis led us, with astonishing ease, through the world’s most famous equation. Now, in Electric Universe, he illuminates the wondrous yet invisible force that permeates our universe—and introduces us to the virtuoso scientists who plumbed its secrets.
For centuries, electricity was seen as little more than a curious property of certain substances that sparked when rubbed. Then, in the 1790s, Alessandro Volta began the scientific investigation that ignited an explosion of knowledge and invention. The force that once seemed inconsequential was revealed to be responsible for everything from the structure of the atom to the functioning of our brains. In harnessing its power, we have created a world of wonders—complete with roller coasters and radar, computer networks and psychopharmaceuticals.
A superb storyteller, Bodanis weaves tales of romance, divine inspiration, and fraud through lucid accounts of scientific breakthroughs. The great discoverers come to life in all their brilliance and idiosyncrasy, including the visionary Michael Faraday, who struggled against the prejudices of the British class system, and Samuel Morse, a painter who, before inventing the telegraph, ran for mayor of New York City on a platform of persecuting Catholics. Here too is Alan Turing, whose dream of a marvelous thinking machine—what we know as the computer—was met with indifference, and who ended his life in despair after British authorities forced him to undergo experimental treatments to “cure” his homosexuality.
From the frigid waters of the Atlantic to the streets of Hamburg during a World War II firestorm to the interior of the human body, Electric Universe is a mesmerizing journey of discovery by a master science writer.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 22 more reviews...
Good, but not great... September 17, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I found Electric Universe interesting, but lacking in certain respects. Granted, I listened to the abridged audio, CD version of this book, and my background is in Electrical Engineering, so I'll try to not to judge harshly because it was a good book. I would certainly recommend this to anyone new to the history and principles of electricity and electronics. It is a good starting point, in that it's very comprehensive, meaning it covers most of the big ideas and important people and puts these into a historical perspective that anyone can easily follow. A little more detail and focus would have been nice at times, but again, maybe that's just me. I'm a little disappointed my favorite EE wasn't mentioned in the book, Nikola Tesla, but I should expect that by now (forever an underrated geniuses). With that said, I'd certainly recommend Electric Universe, and I'm certainly glad I experienced it, but it probably won't crack my top ten anytime soon. Coolest parts of the book, Faraday, Turing, and finally, an accurate portrayal of Edison.
 What? No Tesla? July 19, 2007
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
For the critical thinker who studies the history of science or history in general it is often most instructive what an author leaves out. Somehow Bodanis managed to tell the "true" story of electricity without mentioning Tesla once. WTF?
Shockingly Common May 14, 2007
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
You won't learn much about electricity by reading this book. Oh, there is the odd, interesting snippet here and there, but by and large the book is mostly a recounting of the lives of the British wing of electrical research over the past several hundred years. Missing is Benjamin Franklin. Missing is Nikola Tesla. The story is grossly incomplete.
Bodanis' style is a little too cutesy, a little too formulaic. His analogies are sophomoric: "...these silicon rocks can shift electric currents through in one direction or another, and the rock itself doesn't have to move...The rock can simply sit there, Buddha-like..." And the construction of the book is odd, with five sections covering electrical properties from "Wires" to "Waves" and so on, each told with mini, mini biographies of some of the scientists, researchers, and inventors involved. Sometimes the chapters build upon one another, demonstrating a curve of learning across the decades, but then there will be a complete disconnect: The chapter on Heinrich Hertz is recounted completely with excerpts from Hertz' diaries--interesting if placed in context, but this chapter reads like a plaster patch placed in the middle of the book. Toward the end of the book an addendum, a chapter entitled "What Happened Next" follows the lives of some of the historical people recounted in the book after their great discoveries were made. Joseph Henry, it seems, became a friend of Abraham Lincoln, and died in 1878 wishing he had taken out more patents. Another ending chapter, "Mr. Amp, Mr. Volt, and Mr. Watt"...oops, Bodanis forgot to explain the basics during the course of the narrative--just stick it in here. And then on to the "Notes", wherein lies much useful information that should have been incorporated into the earlier chapters.
As a hodgepodge of information about electricity, "Electric Universe" could serve as a reasonable resource for primary or secondary school curricula. But in truth, this same information is readily available on Wikipedia if one trusts that source, or better yet, within a good, bound set of encyclopedias.
 Yet another book that proves any subject can be made interesting November 27, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Electric Universe is one of those science books full of anecdotal details and the little stories behind the big stories. The book covers some of the big discoveries and inventions in the field of electricity. Lightbulbs, telephones and radar are among the big ideas that get mentioned.
The subtitle is meant more as a play on words than anything else, as there are no real "shocking" stories here, just a lot of interesting facts that make the book part science lesson and part history lesson in a format that is accessible even for those with no background or interest in science.
Reading (or listening as the case may be) to a book like this, one gets the feeling that one could write a nonfiction story on just about anything and make it interesting. After all, there is always a story of some sort if you are willing to dig. Whether it's a book like The Meaning of Everything about the writing of the Oxford English Dictionary or Salt about, well, salt successful books have been written on subjects that don't at first seem interesting. I'm waiting for Whirr: The Story of the Electric Can Opener and From Corncobs to Quilted Northerm: The Story of Toilet Paper. Hmm, perhaps I should be writing book proposals instead of book reviews.
Ambitious Title for a Lightweight Book with some Interesting Facts September 20, 2006
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
The reader should understand that this author picked a huge subject and out of that book he follows a few interesting sidelights. The book's contents is like a rock skimming across the surface of a lake, Where the rock hits, there is an interesting story, but do I feel like I know about the lake? This author has an interesting style, his E=MC2 book dealt with a narrow subject (an equation). This book is a fast read with interesting facts, but of course it can not cover the scope of the title
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