Simply Electrifying: The Technology That Transformed the World, from Benjamin Franklin to Elon Musk

Selected for J.P. Morgan's 2018 Holiday Reading List Imagine your life without the internet. Without phones. Without television. Without sprawling cities. Without the freedom to continue working and playing after the sun goes down. Electricity is at the core of all modern life. It has transformed our society more than any other technology. Yet, no book offers a comprehensive history about this technological marvel. Until now. Simply Electrifying: The Technology that Transformed the World, from Benjamin Franklin to Elon Musk brings to life the 250-year history of electricity through the stories of the men and women who used it to transform our world: Benjamin Franklin, James Watt, Michael Faraday, Samuel F.B. Morse, Thomas Edison, Samuel Insull, Albert Einstein, Rachel Carson, Elon Musk, and more. In the process, it reveals for the first time the complete, thrilling, and often-dangerous story of electricity's historic discovery, development, and worldwide application. Electricity plays a fundamental role not only in our everyday lives but in history's most pivotal events, from global climate change and the push for wind- and solar-generated electricity to Japan's nuclear accident at Fukushima and Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons. Written by electricity expert and four-decade veteran of the industry Craig R. Roach, Simply Electrifying marshals, in fascinating narrative detail, the full range of factors that shaped the electricity business over time--science, technology, law, politics, government regulation, economics, business strategy, and culture--before looking forward toward the exhilarating prospects for electricity generation and use that will shape our future.