The Age Edison: Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America Audiobook

Quotes

• “Freeberg’s deft social history explores a remarkable period in America’s cultural and economic development. By understanding the post-Edison world we can see how nightlife really began; how our workdays grew considerably longer; and how the urban gloom was extinguished by the commerce of illumination.”

  — Jon Gertner, New York Times bestselling author of The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation

• “Ernest Freeberg’s fascinating account of the arrival and impact of electric lighting in America fills an important gap in the history of this subject. This well-written and insightful book should appeal both to scholars and lay readers, all of whom will learn much about the complex history of the adoption of this new technology.”

  — Paul Israel, author of Edison: A Life of Invention; general editor, The Thomas Edison Papers

• “Ernest Freeberg’s luminous new narrative shows that the long-lived ‘Wizard of Menlo Park’ (1847–1931) not only created a technology that changed lives worldwide but also helped create a culture of invention, making systematic research a disciplined, economic activity. An engrossing historical study of ingenuity at work.”

  — Barnes & Noble, editorial review

• “Illuminating.”

  — Publishers Weekly

• “A genial, sometimes jolting account of the social and political consequences of crying, ‘Fiat lux!’”

  — Kirkus Reviews

• “A dynamo of a book powered by an infectious enthusiasm for the can-do spirit of Edison and rival geniuses racing to turn night into day. Freeberg writes with verve and uncommon clarity, all the while deeply enriching our understanding of an age raring to embrace modernity.”

  — A. Roger Ekirch, author of At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past