Word: inventors
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...view Edison as an eccentric anomaly, and leave his life and work to the historians of wizardry or of science. Conventional histories deal with technological development as though it were an independent force, growing without any influence from the men who in fact produced it. But to ignore an inventor as part of a larger force is no more valid than ignoring a president because his actions are largely determined by political forces or ignoring a businessman because his ways are mainly set by laws of economics...
...important gap in the story of America's industrialization and urbanization in the late 1800s becomes instead a long collection of trivia and anecdotes. This new Edison biography is fine as source material for those who are interested in finding out details about the life of an important inventor, but it will not offer much interesting material to those with only a passing interest in the history of technology...
Edison's life does entail some inherently interesting history--young Tom growing up in the Midwest during the Civil War, selling newspapers and printing one of his own; Edison the insomniac telegraphist; Edison the eccentric inventor; Edison the occasional businessman. But Clark's book is only interesting to the extent that Edison's life was interesting. Thoughtful analysis is largely left behind after the first half dozen pages, and the book becomes a string of information bits, arranged loosely in chronological order. The only logic connecting the information presented is the immediately obvious: what happened when. Clark rarely steps back...
...hard about what he has dug up. Clark continually and annoyingly relies on quotes to supply the book's only colorful observations about Edison's personality and his image. It is Edison's words, not Clark's, that provide the reader with a sense of the danger of the inventor's headlong rush to "make it go." Clark quotes Edison when he decided to relocate his lab in New Jersey saying, "See that valley? Well, I'm going to make it more beautiful. I'm going to dot it with factories...
...Though Inventor Clive Sinclair, 37, is hoping to drum up demand for his set throughout Europe, he is particularly interested in the rich American market, where he has limited sales to such pricy outlets as Manhattan-based Bloomingdales, Dallas' Neiman-Marcus and Southern California's Bullocks. Even so, he insists the set "is not a toy. Its uses are endless-at sporting events, on a boat, commuting by train, for automobile passengers...