Edison

Through relentless tinkering, by trial and error, the story goes, Thomas Alva Edison perseveres - and changes the world. Working against the common perception of Edison as a symbol of a mythic American past where persistence and individuality yielded hard-earned success, Israel demonstrates how Edison's remarkable career was actually very much a product of the inventor's fast-changing era. Informed by more than five million pages of archival documents, Paul Israel's ambitious life of Edison brightens the unexamined corners of a singularly influential and triumphant career in science. Edison…